



I* A 














^ 







ESSAYS 

IN 

OCCULTISM, SPIRITISM, AND 
DEMONOLOGY 



BY 
DEAN W. R. HARRIS 

Author of "'Days and Nights in the Tropics,*' 

"By Path and Trail," * Pioneers of the 

Cross in Canada," etc. 



B. HERDER BOOK CO. 
17 South Broadway, St. Louis, Mo. 

68, Great Russell St., London, W. C. 
1919 






-NIHIL OBSTAT 

Sti. Ludovici, die 29, Sept. 1918. 

F. G. Holweck, 

Censor Librorum 



IMPRIMATUR 

Sti. Ludovici, die 30, Sept. 1918. 

^Joannes J. Glennon, 
Archiepiscopus 

Sti. Ludovici 



Copyright, 1919, 

Joseph Gummersbach 

All rights reserved 

Printed in V. S. A. 



A511605 



1919 



TO 

VERY REV. ROBERT McBRADY, C.S.B. 

As a slight mark of gratitude for his 

kindness and of admiration for 

his character and ability 




"These Hindoos of Malabar, when asked if, in their land, 
there were apparitions or phantoms, replied: 'Yes, but we look 
upon them as evil spirits. We believe them to be the souls of 
those who committed suicide, or perished by a violent death. 
Night is their favorite time for appearing. They seduce the 
weak-minded and the curious and tempt others in a thousand 
different ways. They aim to do all the injury they can to 
human beings.' " 

J. Gorres, "La Mystique," Vol. Ill, p. 63. 



PEEPACE 

As far back as history goes, at all times, in 
all lands, and among all peoples materializations 
of spirits have occurred. The spirit manifesta- 
tions to-day are but a repetition of those which 
took place in pre-Christian times. 

The war and the publications of Sir Arthur 
Conan Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge, W. J. Craw- 
ford, and Emile Boirac have given to Spiritism 
a popular vogue and impetus. By a singular 
coincidence books on Spiritism, published in 
Germany, France, and Italy have appeared al- 
most simultaneously with English and Ameri- 
can publications on this weird subject. Many 
of these have given a quasi-scientific endorsa- 
tion to Spiritism, and have contributed official 
support to the current belief in the reality of 
Spiritistic phenomena. 

Catholic students of these phenomena have 
never doubted their reality. While admitting 

i 



Ji PREFACE 

and conceding the impositions, frauds, trickery 
and deceptions of many professional mediums. 
Catholic psychologists and theologians, who 
for nearly two thousand years have investigated 
the subject, hold that materializations have al- 
ways taken place and are occurring to-day, and 
that no theory of fiaud or delusion can account 
for them. 

Planchette and Ouija board answers and 
automatic writing are facts of every-day experi- 
ence, but that these responses, materializations, 
spirit communications and the like, are mes- 
sages from the dead, Catholic psychology de- 
nies. 

Applying the methods of physics to psychic 
phenomena, Professor Crawford, in his latest 
work, "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena," 
believes he has demonstrated not only the 
actuality and truth of these phenomena, but also 
the existence of a hitherto unknown manner of 
manifestation of psychic or spirit energy. 

Conan Doyle, in his book, "The New Revela- 
tion/' asserts that these spirit communications 
establish a new religion, a "New Revelation," 



PREFACE jy 

a re-birth of the Christian religion, while Emile 
Boirac informs us in his "Psychology of the 
Future' ' that these phenomena lay the founda- 
tions of a new psychology, dealing with the ob- 
scure forces latent in the nature of man. 

These three well-known writers are firm be- 
lievers in Spiritism and in the possibility of 
communicating with the souls of the dead. 

Professor Crawford in his brief preface says 
that he is "personally satisfied that the spirits 
are the souls of human beings who have passed 
into the beyond." 

But Catholic psychologists, and many dis- 
tinguished non-Catholic writers who have 
studied Spiritism, state that no evidence which 
would be accepted in any court of law has been 
given to prove that the spirits responding to 
human summons are the souls of men and 
women who at one time lived upon the earth. 
They contend that the phenomena are produced 
and controlled by fallen angels, spirits of evil, 
and that so far from being communications from 
the dead, they are actually malign manifesta- 
tions of diabolic force. They also contend that 



J v PREFACE 

these phenomena are manifestations of de- 
moniac spirits with whom the Catholic Church 
forbids all those who listen to her voice to hold 
intercourse. 

Mr. J. Godfrey Eaupert, who has devoted 
many years to the study of psychic phenomena, 
asks in his book, "The Supreme Problem": 
1 i Can we reasonably believe that the heretofore 
relations and friends will avail themselves of 
means so repulsive and so disastrous as are 
the spiritistic methods in order to furnish evi- 
dence to the living that they still survive? " 

The distinguished British scientist Sir Wil- 
liam Barrett, writing on Spiritism, says : ' ' For 
my own part, it seems not improbable that the 
bulk, if not the whole of the physical mani- 
festations witnessed in a spiritual seance, are 
the product of human-like, but not really human, 
intelligence — good or bad, daimonia they may 
be — which congregate around the medium, as a 
rule drawn from that particular plane of 
mental and moral development in the un- 
seen which corresponds to the mental and 
moral development of the medium. More- 
over, if there is any truth in the view suggested 



PREFACE y 

above of a possible source of the purely physical 
manifestations, it seems to me that the Apostle 
Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, points to 
a race of spiritual creatures, similar to those 
I have described, but of a malignant type, when 
he speaks of beings not made of flesh and blood 
inhabiting the air around us and able injuri- 
ously to affect mankind. Good as well as mis- 
chievous agencies doubtless exist in the unseen ; 
this, of course, is equally true if the phenomena 
are due to those who once lived upon the earth. 
In any case, granting the existence of a spirit- 
ual world, it is necessary to be on our guard 
against the invasion of our will by a lower order 
of intelligence and morality. ' ' 

In harmony with the will and the orders of 
Almighty God, the Catholic Church not only 
denounces Spiritism, but also commands her 
children to abstain from all intercourse and 
communication with spirits, whether they be of 
the dead or demoniacal. She condemns also 
spirit communications because of the frightful 
results which inevitably follow all sustained 
Spiritistic practices. And in her denunciations 
she is supported by influential members of the 



yj PREFACE 

Church of England, clergymen and eminent sci- 
entists. Members of the Spiritistic cult may 
protest against the severe condemnation pro- 
nounced on Spiritism by the Catholic Church; 
but, with Dr. Eaupert we ask them to " Please 
examine the evidence. Putting theology aside, 
examine, with an unbiased mind the Spiritistic 
phenomena. You will quickly become convinced 
that a transcendental intelligence is certainly 
manifesting itself through these phenomena, 
and you will also find that this intelligence is a 
powerfully evil force/ ' 

Centuries of experience have taught Catholic 
psychologists and doctors that devotion to Spir- 
itism has worked ravages upon the minds of 
weak-willed and impressionable people, and has 
driven many to suicide and insane asylums. 

Whether these statements and the Catholic 
view of Spiritism are accepted or rejected, the 
frightful consequences resulting from communi- 
cation with transcendental spirits should be 
plainly understood, and all thoughtful Chris- 
tians should unite in denouncing the cult of 
Spiritism and spirit manifestations. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Preliminary Discourse 1 

II The Sixth Sense 19 

III The Sense of Orientation 29 

IV Wonders of Bilocation 47 

V Bicorporeity 69 

VI Dual Personality 77 

VII Spiritism, Ancient and Modern .... 91 

VIII Spiritism— What Is It? 103 

IX Apparitions 115 

X Demoniacal Possession 135 

XI What of the Dead ?........ 149 

XII Spirits of Another World 169 



"There are more things, Horatio, in heaven and on 
earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

— Hamlet. 



Among the occult sciences I include the cult of 
Spiritism, and I do not deny that associated with it 
are fraud, deception and trickery, but can any one 
believe that scholars like de Mirville and Des Mous- 
seaux and scientists like Lodge, Flammarion, Barret, 
Richet, Wallace, and James, who, after many years of 
experience with mediums, after patient examination 
of the cult, and intelligent study of the subject, aban- 
doned materialism for Spiritism — were deceived. 

They have all confessed their absolute belief in the 
objective reality of spirit phenomena. 

The only ground of dispute between these eminent 
men and Catholic and Anglican investigators of the 
cult is the nature of the beings or intelligences which 
produce the phenomena. 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM, 
SPIRITISM, AND DEMONOLOGY 



PKELIMINARY DISCOURSE 

Modern Miracles — Miracles of the Bible — Man Sur- 
rounded by Mysteries — Science and the Grain of Sand — 
Attraction — Luminous Ether — Effects of Adam's Fall — 
Tendency to Forget God — Sphere of the Angels — The 
"Great Apostasy" — Angelic Beings — Statement of Pro- 
fessor Groves — Professor Tyndall and Sound — Miracles — 
Saint Paul and Agrippa — Defect of Our Spiritual Vision 
— The Incarnation. 

Before entering upon any disquisition or 
explanation of miracles or phenomena of the 
occult sciences, it is well to bear in mind that 
the wonders and miracles recorded in the lives 
of the saints and in the annals of ecclesiastical 
history are not in the same class with, nor so 
faith-compelling as are the miracles of the New 
Testament, which serve to confirm our faith in 

1 



6 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

the divinity of Jesus Christ and in the holiness 
and perpetuity of the religion He established. 
Apart from the fact that these testamentary 
signs and miracles are recorded in books writ- 
ten under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and 
confirmed by the voice of the Church, it must be 
remembered that they are included in the de- 
posit of faith and may only be denied under 
penalty of incurring the guilt of heresy and 
committing an act of manifest impiety. All 
other miracles, no matter how well authenti- 
cated, rest upon what is termed legal evidence, 
and the Church leaves us free to accept or re- 
ject them. This is not saying that, if a miracle 
is substantiated and approved by rightly con- 
stituted ecclesiastical authority and we refuse 
to credit it, we are not incurring a note of rash- 
ness and mental arrogance. But let us bear in 
mind this truth. We must believe with the 
Apostles and the Fathers that the Holy Spirit 
is the soul of the Church and that, while the 
Third Person of the Adorable Trinity dwells 
in and animates the Church, miracles will, 
for all time, occur as manifestations of the in- 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE O 

dwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Kingdom 
on earth of Jesus Christ, and as testimonies of 
God's love for his children. Let me predicate 
however that, without faith in God, miracles, 
signs, wonders and certain " psychic phen- 
nomena" are impossible of solution, and that, 
without belief in the inspiration of the Bible, 
they are difficult to explain. 

We are surrounded by mysteries — by mir- 
acles, by prodigies, by the incomprehensible. 
In the purely material world the smallest grain 
of sand defies the powers of the human mind. 
For six thousand years science has examined 
it, has turned it to the light, placed it under 
the microscope, divided and subdivided it; she 
has tormented it with experiments, wearied it 
with interminable questions to extract from it 
some answer touching its intimate composition ; 
she has asked it with a curiosity that is never 
satisfied: "Whence came you? After I have 
divided you, can I divide you again? And will 
there be still something yet to divide when time 
shall be no more?" So on the rim of the in- 
finite, science hesitates, stumbles, is bewildered, 



*± ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

is seized with vertigo, and at last exclaims : "I 
am as one groping in the dark." So with at- 
traction, that mysterious and wonderful power 
of a primal, elemental law or force that no man 
has ever seen, touched or heard, and which in 
its silent and mysterious influence surpasses 
all other known powers. And what do we 
know of that substance of infinite tenuity, yet of 
immense elasticity, which permeates all space 
and every other substance, which cannot be seen 
or felt or weighed, and whose composition is un- 
known? So far as we know, it offers no resist- 
ance to the motion of planetary bodies, yet its 
existence is made manifest by its property of 
transmitting chemical rays, light, radiant heat, 
electricity, and probably some more recondite 
forms of energy, at fabulous velocity from the 
remotest parts of the universe, and by means of 
vibrations, the nature of which, with their 
astounding frequency and pitch, has been de- 
termined by mathematicians. The unscientific 
mind may be disposed to regard its existence 
as a myth or at most as an abstract conception 
of the human mind, and yet that great scien- 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE D 

tist, Lord Kelvin, has declared that not only 
does it exist, but it is "the only substance we 
are confident of in dynamics and that the one 
thing we are sure of, is the reality and sub- 
stantiality of this luminous ether." 

How do these myriad bodies of the universe, 
these silent, insensible bodies, unconsciously 
sustain that reciprocity of action and reaction 
which holds them in marvelous equilibrium, and 
in accord with one another f 

The visible creation is a veil behind which 
the invisible Creator "worketh hitherto"; a 
veil which conceals Him from the unbelieving, 
the impure, the self-sufficient and the proud, 
and through which the pure of heart alone may 
see, and even they only as St. Paul saw, "in a 
glass darkly," though with a promise of a 
revelation "face to face" when "the day 
breaks and the shadows fly away. ' ' 

The Church explains this darkness of the 
intellect and weakness of perception when she 
tells us that the sin of Adam, our first parent, 
visited upon the human race "the wound of 
ignorance by which the intellect has been weak- 



D ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

ened, so that it has a difficulty in discerning 
truth, easily falls into error, and inclines more 
to things curious and temporal than to things 
eternal." The mind of man to-day, as in the 
time of the Apostles, is "tossed about by every 
wind of doctrine," so that we are witnesses to 
the unseemly exhibition of Darwin, Maudsley, 
Tyndall, and Huxley denying the existence of 
another world, and Sir Oliver Lodge, Conan 
Doyle, and Emile Boirac communing with spir- 
its and proclaiming aloud the immortality of the 
soul and the right of man to evoke the dead. 

If God has willed, and now wills, to bestow 
His gifts and mercies in a certain way and on 
certain persons, have we the right to reject 
His manifestations and insist, with Naaman 
the leper, "that He shall come out and put His 
hand on the place," and reveal to us how it is 
done? 

There is in fallen human nature a tendency, 
more or less strong, but present in every in- 
dividual of our race, to forget God. Man is 
prone to be the slave of the material and the 
sensual. He finds it hard to realize his de- 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE < 

pendence, from hour to hour, on the sustain- 
ing power and loving care of an unseen Father. 
Underneath him are the Everlasting Arms, but 
as they are not of flesh and blood, it demands the 
possession of supernatural faith to perceive 
them. Faith is not knowledge, it is not a pro- 
duction of the laboratory, but a supernatural 
gift which enables us to believe in and, in a 
sense, to see what is not visible. It is a faculty 
of the soul which demands constant exercise, 
else it will grow weak and, in time, incapable 
of seeing even "as in a glass darkly," through 
a veil of unsubstantial phenomena, into the 
spiritual kingdom of "Angels, Powers, Prin- 
cipalities, and Thrones." 

In order, then, to quicken our faith, and to 
help us to understand that God hath dominion 
over the living and the dead, to feel our de- 
pendence on Him for our daily bread, our health 
and life, He visits us, as in the days of David, 
with sorrow and affliction, famines, wars, and 
plagues. Again He makes his presence known 
through His Angels, or "by the spirits of the 
just made perfect, ' ' or in benignity and tender- 



8 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

ness as in apparitions like those of Paray-le- 
Monial and Lourdes. 

Man in relation to animals, to the spheres of 
beings which are placed below him, occupies a 
distinct and, to them, a supernatural position, 
and to these creatures his actions are miracu- 
lous, in so far as they cannot understand them. 

Now, have we any authority for believing 
that there is a sphere, state, or place different 
from ours, occupied by beings of a subtler es- 
sence and a higher intelligence than belong to 
members of the human race? That is to say, 
that as we on this earth recognize the existence 
of the three kingdoms — animal, vegetable, and 
mineral — with their divisions and subdivisions, 
may there not be, and are there not, in the un- 
seen world beings of an order superior to ours, 
endowed with or possessed of attributes, powers 
and faculties altogether unlike and superior to 
the endowments of our nature? If this be so, 
the powers of such beings would be as superior, 
from our point of vision, and their actions as 
miraculous, as are our actions from the stand- 
point of animals or of lower intelligences. 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE 9 

According to revelation, we are surrounded 
by beings of a supernatural or preternatural 
order. We are told of the ' ' Prince of the power 
of the air," of " principalities and powers in 
high places," that is, in the air above us. We 
are warned that "our wrestling is not against 
flesh and blood, but against principalities and 
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of 
this world," that is to say, against Satan and 
his rebel spirits, who are in conspiracy to ruin 
the human race and to frustrate the purposes 
of God towards mankind. 

No mind which accepts the inspiration of the 
Bible may deny the existence and malign in- 
fluence on human beings of these rebel 
angels. 

That wonderful Apostle, St. John the divine, 
informs us by authority of the Holy Ghost that 
in the "great apostasy" of the angels two-thirds 
of the heavenly host remained loyal to their 
Creator and kept their principality. Many of 
these angelic beings are mentioned in Holy Writ 
as messengers of God, obeying His divine will, 
and are represented as the friends of all human 



10 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

beings who do God's will here on earth as they 
do in Heaven. 

To these pure spirits are ascribed many of 
the wonders and operations of nature: — the 
therapeutic or curative effects of certain waters, 
as in the pool of Bethsaida and the waters of 
the Jordan when Naaman washed himself in 
them; the eruption of volcanic fires, as in the 
devastation of Sodom and the cities of the 
Plains; the control of thunder and lightning, 
as on Mount Sinai; the ruling of the winds, as 
mentioned in the Apocalypse ; the producing of 
earthquakes, as at the Crucifixion and Resur- 
rection; the origin, direction, and cessation of 
pestilential diseases, as in the punishment of 
David; as messengers of God's mercy, as in 
the Passover. 

That these angelic beings can make them- 
selves visible to man we know from the experi- 
ence of the young Tobias, and need only now 
refer to Abraham and his spiritual guests, to 
the angels of the Annunciation, to the liberation 
of St. Peter from prison and to other innum- 
erable examples recorded in Holy Writ. The 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE 11 

control of the elements, and superhuman 
powers, are attributed in the Old and New 
Testaments to the ministry of angels. Just as 
man, within a limited sphere, can control the 
elements, and draw the electric fluid from the 
clouds, or make it the peaceful and instantane- 
ous medium of conversation with his f ellowmen 
in any part of the earth, so the Angels are rep- 
resented to us as holding in their hands the 
secrets of the powers of nature, ready to com- 
bine and direct them according to the will of 
Him whose ministers they are: — now "passing 
over" the houses of the captive Hebrews and 
"smiting all the first born of Egypt ;" now 
causing a malarial wind to destroy the hosts of 
Sennacherib; now "restraining" the plague as 
it threatened Jerusalem, or unlocking the gyves 
on the wrists of St. Peter and opening the door 
of his prison. 

Nor does Science oppose itself to the possi- 
bility of these occurrences. Science — physical 
science — does not and cannot prove the existence 
of angelic beings, for these are outside of and 
beyond its domain, but it admits the possibility 



12 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

of their existence and the actuality of their 
presence. It concedes that the air around us 
may be musical with the melody of unearthly 
voices or the whisperings of evil spirits. Thus 
the late Dr. Funk tells us: "It is a terribly 
dangerous mistake to think there are no evil 
spirits. There are great hosts of them. They 
come at times without formal invitation of the 
medium or of the circle and control to the hurt 
of the members of the circle." And that em- 
inent scientist, Professor Groves, says in his 
"Correlation of Physical Forces" : "Myriads 
of organized beings may exist imperceptible to 
our vision, even if we were in the midst of 
them." So with regard to sound. Notes 
above and below a certain ascertainable pitch 
are inaudible to the human ear. Professor Tyn- 
dall in his interesting book on the "Glaciers of 
the Alps' ' writes: "Once as I crossed a Swiss 
mountain in company with a friend, I heard dis- 
tinctly and for a long time the shrill chirping of 
innumerable insects, which thronged the adja- 
cent grass. My friend heard nothing of this: 
it lay quite beyond his range of hearing. ' ' This 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE 13 

statement may help us to understand how it is 
possible for a person like Bernadette of Lourdes 
to be surrounded by sights and sounds unseen 
and unheard by others. 

The eyes of the Prophet's servant had to be 
supernaturally opened before he could see the 
angels guarding his master, and the vision 
which was vouchsafed to St. Stephen before his 
martyrdom was unseen by those around him. 
In like manner the angelic hymn which broke 
the silence of the midnight air of our Saviour 's 
nativity was heard only by the shepherds watch- 
ing their flocks. So the voice which spoke from 
the clouds at the Baptism of our Lord was 
heard only by Him and John the Baptist. 
Though the travelling companions of St. Paul, 
when on his way to Damascus, heard the sound 
of the voice which converted him, yet they could 
distinguish no articulate words. 

Assuming, then, as a hypothesis which science 
admits to be possible, and which the Church ex- 
alts into an article of faith, that there exist 
hosts of angelic creatures, good and evil, there 
is no violence done to the human mind when it 



14 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



is asked to believe that such beings are able 
to accomplish things and perform acts which 
to us, with our limited powers, are prodigies 
or miracles. 

But what is a miracle ? A miracle is an effect 
without a visible or, in the human order, a 
known, cause, When we know and understand 
the cause, we no longer regard the effect as a 
miracle. When we call a miracle a suspension 
of the law or laws of nature, the expression 
must be understood, not in its absolute sense, 
but only as it relates to ourselves. The fire of 
Nebuchadnezzar's furnace departed not from 
the common law of burning because it did not 
consume the three young men, for it destroyed 
those feeding the fires : the youths were simply 
placed within the sphere of another law — a 
law unknown to the spectators and which 
shielded them against the natural law of com- 
bustion. 

We also give the name of miracle to a result 
produced without the intervention of a second- 
ary cause. For example, the conversion of 
water into wine by our Blessed Lord at Cana 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE 



15 



we call a miracle, but we do not apply the word 
to wine produced from the grape. In point of 
fact, however, the one is as much a miracle as 
the other. He who, at the marriage feast of 
Cana, converted water into wine, performs as 
great a miracle yearly before our very eyes, 
though by a more gradual process. It is only 
our familiarity with it which prevents us from 
recognizing its miraculous character. 

The miracles of grace are reflected in the 
miracles of nature. God is the author of both, 
and as He is daily performing miracles within 
the sphere of man's rebellious will, so He is 
also working them in the passive realm of nat- 
ural powers, either directly, or through the min- 
istership of His angels. Day after day He 
changes water into wine, wine into blood, blood 
into milk. Surely, then, it is perilous pre- 
sumption of us, with our meager and frag- 
mentary knowledge of the laws of nature, and 
standing as we are in the presence of a thousand 
miracles, to prescribe limits to the omnipo- 
tence of our Creator, or to say He cannot cure 
a helpless paralytic or " command the clouds 



16 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



that they rain no rain" without violating a law 
of nature. "Why should it be thought a thing 
incredible with you, King, that God should 
raise the dead?" asked St. Paul of Agrippa. 
And the Church asks of the Agrippas of our 
time: "Why should it be thought a thing in- 
credible that an angel should appear and speak 
to a soul shrined in an earthly tabernacle, or that 
God should impart to the waters of — Lourdes, 
for instance, — medicinal properties, as He did 
to the pool of Bethsaida?' ' 

While we here on earth are tabernacled in 
our bodies, we are altogether in a different 
sphere and state from angelic or demoniacal 
beings. When, in God's good time, we are lib- 
erated from the prison of the body, we shall no 
longer see "as in a glass darkly." And let me 
here observe that whatever difficulties prodi- 
gies or miracles may present to speculative rea- 
son, they offer none to the practical faith of a 
Christian. He knows in whom he believes ; his 
own experience and the history of the human 
race enable him to scatter to the winds the 
theories and suppositions of those much over- 



PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE 17 

rated scientists who are forever contradicting 
themselves. 

In the Incarnation of the Son of God the 
Christian has a clearer revelation than Science 
can give him of the ways of our Heavenly 
Father with human souls. , With a touch or 
with a word He commands the forces and laws 
of nature, and they obey. The blind man by 
the wayside, the paralytic on his bed, the woman 
of an accursed race, whose daughter was ' ' griev- 
ously vexed with a devil,' ' the disciples in jeop- 
ardy on a stormy sea, the widow weeping by the 
bier of her only son, the risen Lazarus, will for 
all time proclaim the omnipotent power of God 
and His love for and oversight of His children, 
"yesterday, to-day, and forever.' ' 



"Are there not in every community individuals 
who possess a mysterious power, concerning whose 
origin, mode of action and limits, we and they are 
alike in the dark? I refer to such organic forces as 
are summed up under the words clairvoyance, sec- 
ond sight, telepathy and the like. Rational medicine 
recognizes their existence and while she attributes 
them to morbid and exceptional influences, confesses 
her want of more exact knowledge, and refrains from 
barren theorizing." — "Myths of the New World." — 
Brinton. 



II 

THE SIXTH SENSE 

An Evening with Clever People — The Photograph — The 
Touch of an Armless Hand and a Spirit Call — Man's 
Faculties and Senses — Cause of Structural Changes — Ex- 
amples from Animal Life — Cave Creatures — Birds that 
Cannot Fly — Rudimentary Organs — Statement of St. 
Francis Xavier — Decay of Certain Organs. 

When wintering in Mexico, in 1912, I was in- 
duced to be one of six or eight ladies and gentle- 
men invited to partake of the hospitality of an 
Italian gentleman who, with his wife and daugh- 
ter was staying for the winter in Mexico City. 
After dinner we all adjourned to the reception 
room. For nearly two hours we conversed 
about various matters — second sight, true and 
false miracles, and the sixth sense. 

They asked me about my visit to Chiapas and 
my interview with Colomache, the Maya seeress. 
We began to talk of that Egyptian witchcraft 
by which the photograph or likeness of a friend 

19 




20 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

appears on the palm of a child 's hand on the 
demand of the sorcerer. A lady present in the 
room observed that an acquaintance of hers, 

Senor , had, when in Cairo, purchased the 

secret of reproduction and had been able to do 
the thing, but having afterward become a prac- 
tical Christian, he no longer practiced it. 

A French gentleman, M. Dupotet, who was 
present with his daughter, a beautiful young 
girl of seventeen or eighteen, told of a strange 
experience which happened to him at Teguci- 
galpa, Honduras, where he went, accompanied 
by his daughter, to open an agency for a hard- 
ware firm of which he was senior partner. 
"My daughter," he said, "occupied at the 
fonda (hotel) a room which opened into mine. 
About midnight I awoke suddenly, felt a 
touch upon my shoulder and heard the words: 
'Mon pere, viens, viens vite — Father come, 
come quick.' Thinking my child called me, I 
lighted my lamp and entered her room. 
She was sleeping soundly, but to my horror, 
crawling on the sheet that covered her was a 
hideous white scorpion, the most deadly of its 



THE SIXTH SENSE 



21 



kind in Central America. Quickly lifting a rug 
from the floor, I fell upon and smothered it. 
Unless the voice I heard was the voice of her 
guardian angel, I can in no way explain the 
mystery.' ' 

The father of our host remarked in the hear- 
ing of us all : 6 ' I can well believe this happened, 
for we are surrounded with beings that we know 
not. A sense is wanting to us, and if but a 
veil dropped, we might see this room filled with 
beings who look on us. Besides mysteries of 
this kind are continually happening, and I be- 
lieve it from what occurred to myself." He 
then told of an experience he had when on a 
hunting expedition in the Sierra Madre Moun- 
tains, with a man and woman who were what 
he called prevoyants, or "second sight" per- 
sons who possessed a power of orientation or 
a sixth sense. From what he told us and from 
what I heard from others that evening, I am 
satisfied that the average man, apart from his 
understanding, has many faculties which place 
him in intimate relation with his f ellowmen and 
with beings of another world. He has an in- 



22 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



tellect, which, as a rule, is the faculty of know- 
ing things. He is a creature of sensations, of 
emotions, and sentiments. He has imagination 
or a faculty of reproducing in his mind the 
images of things seen or learned by any of his 
senses. He has external sensibility, which is 
acted upon by his five senses — touch, smell, taste 
sight, and hearing, — which place him in com- 
munication with the material world. 

The more intimately we study animated na- 
ture, and, in particular, human nature, the more 
we are persuaded that not only men, but all 
other creatures have, by force of circumstances, 
by changes in food, climate, environment, and 
other conditions experienced in the course of 
ages many structural alterations. While inher- 
iting, by a slow process, powers of adaptation, 
they have lost, through disuse, organs and facul- 
ties which in the remote past were integral and 
necessary parts of their being. 

It is of common knowledge that in the dark 
recesses of underground caves and rivers, 
where eternal darkness reigns, many wonder- 
ful creatures exist and perpetuate themselves. 



THE SIXTH SENSE 23 

One of the greatest subterranean vaults in the 
world is the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It 
has been penetrated for thirty miles and is not 
yet fully explored. Through this cave the Styx 
Eiver flows in profound darkness, and, in places 
whose depths cannot be sounded, swims a very 
peculiar fish, the Cyprinodon, which is blind. 
It has eyes that see not ; it has lost the sense of 
sight, but the eyes and sight are not absolutely 
dead, for the Cyprinodon, when placed in an 
aquarium and in a mild light, recovers after two 
generations its power of distinguishing ob- 
jects. 

In the subterranean rivers flowing through 
the cavernous Alps of Carniola live strange 
fish and singular creatures entirely blind. 
Among these is the Proteus, a peculiar lizard- 
shaped creature provided with lungs and gills, 
which seems to combine all the attributes of an 
amphibious animal. In some of the crabs the 
eye sockets remain, though the eyes are gone. 
It is as if the tripod-stand of a transit was 
found with the transit missing. As it is difficult 
to understand that eyes, though useless, could 



24 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

be of any assistance to fish, bird, or insect liv- 
ing in perpetual darkness, the loss of sight must 
be attributed to disuse. The cave-rat captured 
by Professor Silman in Guiana, was totally 
blind, but after living for a month in graduated 
light, it acquired a dim perception of objects. 

There is no greater anomaly in nature than 
a bird that cannot fly, yet there are many such, 
e. g., the logger-headed duck of Venezuela, the 
Emu and the ostrich. In time the domestic 
hen, goose, and duck will no doubt entirely lose 
the power of flying. Long disuse will weaken 
their pinions. "None of our domestic animals 
can be named/ ' writes Geoff roy Hilaire in his 
"Laws of Variations," "but has suffered a di- 
minution of hearing, seeing, and smelling, and 
this is due to these animals being seldom much 
alarmed. " 

Structurally, men and animals have not 
changed in four thousand years. The men and 
animals embalmed or figured on the monuments 
of ancient Egypt, are identical with those now 
living. But the rudimentary organs now be- 
longing to both orders, and which in remote ages 



THE SIXTH SENSE 25 

were developed and served a useful purpose, 
imply that in prehistoric times animals, and 
possibly men, were anatomically different from 
their existing descendants. The structural 
changes wrought by time are due largely to 
altered climatic conditions, to change of food, 
and to the disuse of the organs themselves. 

Darwin, in his "Origin of Species,' ' assures 
us that the boa constrictor retains rudimentary 
marks of a pelvis and of hind legs, and that 
the manatee (sea-cow) has rudimentary nails. 

It would be difficult to name one of the higher 
animals in which some organ is not in a rudi- 
mentary condition. What can be more curious 
than teeth in foetal whales, which, when grown 
up, have not a tooth in their heads. Again, in 
nearly all mammalia, the males have rudi- 
mentary mammae (teats). Eudimentary or- 
gans in some males still retain their potential- 
ity. This occasionally happens with the 
breasts and mammae of male animals which 
are well developed and secrete milk, as in the 
examples recorded by Von Humboldt and St. 
Francis Xavier, and may account for the origin 



26 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

of the Couvade among certain primitive tribes 
in China, Brazil, Guiana, and Madras. 1 

Von Humboldt, in the third volume of his 
"Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau 
Continent, ' ' says he saw, and verified his seeing 
by contact, a man in the Indian village of Par- 
ana, Columbia, S. A., suckling a three-months' 
old baby. In a letter written by St. Francis 
Xavier in October, 1547, to the members of his 
Society at Rome, he states: "In this Island 
of Amboyna (Malay Archipelago) I have seen 
what no one would believe, and what has been 
unheard of till now ; so perhaps it will be worth 
while to tell you. I saw a he-goat giving suck 
to his kids with his own milk. He had but one 
breast, which gave every day as much milk as 
would fill a basin. I saw it with my own eyes, 
for I would not believe it without seeing it." 2 

i When a man's wife was confined for the first time, he 
went to bed for three weeks. His only food during these 
weeks was a small allowance of water and cassava. When his 
fast and lying-in was completed, his breast and back were 
scarred with the teeth of the accouri. This practice among 
the Arowaks and Caribs of Venezuela deceived the early 
Spanish adventurers, who reported in Madrid that in the dis- 
covered countries the men, and not the women, were confined. 

2 Coleridge's " Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier." Vol. 
I, p. 382. 



THE SIXTH SENSE 



27 



In the udder of a cow there are four developed 
and two rudimentary teats, but the latter in 
some of our domestic cows become well devel- 
oped and give milk. How may we account for 
the sterility of these teats in nearly all cows 
except through disuse? Without doubt disuse 
has been the main agent in rendering organs 
rudimentary. These atrophied organs are wit- 
nesses to what the animal, or individual, was in 
other ages. They may be compared with let- 
ters which are retained in the spelling of a word, 
and, though of no use in pronunciation, they 
give us a clue to the derivation of the word it- 
self. 

Since there can be no doubt that in animals 
certain organs have been atrophied through 
disuse, may there not be in animals and men 
latent spiritual, psychic, or atavistic powers 
which have, through disuse or under altered 
conditions of life, almost disappeared? We 
know that the sense of fear or caution has al- 
most disappeared in our domestic animals and 
that all of their physical senses have become im- 
paired. 



On the day of our rescue there was something very 
strange about the dog, which possibly students of 
animal psychology may be able to explain. He always 
used to share the bed of one of the men, and would 
remain quiet until the usual hour of rising. But on 
this particular morning, quite contrary to custom, he 
became so restless at about six o'clock that the cook, 
already at work, could not keep him indoors, but had 
to let him out. Lying awake, I heard the cook ex- 
claim: "What the dickens is the matter with the 
dog?" "Beef" was running about on the sands ap- 
parently mad with joy, barking and playing in a most 
unusual manner. 

Now, this question arises: Had the dog any pre- 
sentiment of the coming event of the day ? Is it pos- 
sible the dog's instinct was so sensitive that he could 
hear, feel, or smell the approach of the steamer, which 
did not reach the island till one o 'clock ! We are all 
willing to admit, I dare say, that nature has still 
many secrets hidden from us, so although the be- 
haviour of the dog may only be a strange coincidence, 
I simply relate the fact, leaving the explanation to 
others. — H. T. Bull, captain of the shipwrecked Cath- 
arine, 



Ill 

THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 

Animals and Their Senses — Do Animals and Insects Pos- 
sess a Sixth Sense? — Experiments of Professor Fabre 
— The Wasps and Cylinders — The Striped Seal — Journey 
of a Cat — The Muskrat — Wisdom of Rodents — Opinion of 
Von Hartmann — Intuition — Goethe's Statement — Opinion 
of Professor Wallace — Unsolved Problems — Declarations of 
Dr. Johnson — And of Ferdinand Verre — Clairvoyance of 
the Shaman — Possible Solution. 

Man, in the order of creation, represents the 
completion and perfection of the animal king- 
dom. At an early period in his existence his 
five senses were possibly more highly devel- 
oped than those of animals. In addition to the 
possession of these senses he was endowed with 
other faculties which to-day belong to mem- 
bers of the lower animal kingdom. As certain 
wild animals can foresee and make provision 
for changes in weather, coming storms, and 

29 



30 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

severe winters, and moreover have a sense of 
orientation, may not man also, in early ages, 
have been dowered with similar faculties which 
have become atrophied through disuse? If 
animals, even to-day, possess a sense of direc- 
tion or orientation, may it not be assumed that 
primitive man also was gifted with this sense? 
In order to satisfy himself that insects and 
animals possess a sixth sense or a sense of 
orientation, which directs them to find their 
way home after being transported to great dis- 
tances, Professor Fabre, the French naturalist, 
captured a dozen wasps and painted their ab- 
domens white. He then put each of them in a 
separate cylinder and placed all the cylinders in 
a sealed box which he carried to a forest two 
and a half miles away from the nest. Here he 
liberated them and walked back to the nest. In 
five hours, he informs us, they all returned. 
They could not possibly find their way home by 
sight or any known physical sense; so Fabre 
contends that wasps possess a sixth sense, 
which naturalists term sense of direction or 
orientation. 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 



31 



To verify his conclusion, Fabre continued his 
experiments. He captured six other wasps, 
painted and carried them in sealed cylinders 
four miles into the heart of a populous city, 
and liberated them. They flew upwards, above 
the highest buildings, paused for a time and 
disappeared. Next day, Fabre visited the nest 
and found five of the six marked wasps he had 
carried away. 

Take as another example the case of the 
striped seal recorded by Amundsen. This seal 
dives under a great floe and swims for miles 
until she is satisfied she is near a place shel- 
tered from sea and wind. She now breaks the 
ice, and under the snow builds a vaulted 
chamber, where her young are born and re- 
main till they are old enough to take to the 
water. The striped seal swims away every 
morning to fish in the open sea. She has abso- 
lutely no mark to guide her on the return voy- 
age. It is pitch-dark in the water and un- 
der the ice, yet every night she returns home 
as if her way through the dark waters were il- 
lumined by a thousand lights. She swims 



32 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



straight and true for the exact spot where the 
hole was made, rises and feeds her young. 

Take as another illustration this example, re- 
corded by the " London Standard,' ' May 16, 
1917. Towards the end of April, a cat, owned 
by Squire Love, of Wycombe, was missing. 
The Squire thought that his cat had been stolen 
or killed. Two weeks after the cat's disap- 
pearance Mr. Love received a letter informing 
him that the cat had returned to its first home 
in St. Neats, Huntingdonshire, where it had 
been raised and lived for two years. The dis- 
tance travelled by the cat was ninety-nine miles, 
and as it had been brought in a bag to AVycombe 
in a closed car, how did it, through woods and 
plains and across streams, know the direction by 
which to travel? No one will concede to ani- 
mals a power of foreseeing changes in the 
weather, months before these changes occur, 
by means of inferences formed from a series 
of observations. By what faculty then is the 
beaver governed when he builds his house at 
a much higher level in anticipation of a flood 
that would sweep away his old dwelling, or 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 33 

whence comes the foreknowledge of the field 
mouse that, days before an inundation, leaves 
his home for higher and safer quarters? 

During September and October, the squirrel, 
the musk-rat, and other rodents lay up for 
themselves enough food for a long or a short 
winter. How can the squirrel know, as he 
enters his first autumn, when the winter will 
set in, and in the absence of experience, how 
does he sense the duration, the mildness or 
severity of the winter and measure the quantity 
of food he must bring to his nest? 

The power of forecasting the weather seems 
to be part of a sixth sense or an unconscious 
clairvoyance, of which the wild goose, when it 
wings for the South much earlier than usual, 
knows no more than the moose when, before an 
exceptionally cold winter, he grows a heavier 
pelt and thicker fur than is his wont. 

What is the intermediate link between the 
unconscious cerebration of these animals and 
their acts ? Is this prescience an unconscious 
memory or an attribute of their being, which 
is neither given directly to them through sense 



34 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

perception nor deduced inferentially through 
their understanding? Have animals, then, a 
sixth sense, and are they controlled by intui- 
tion, or by some faculty which may not inaptly 
be called a sixth sense? 

Dr. Edward von Hartmann, in his profound 
work, "The Philosophy of The Unconscious," 
says that "all animals and some men possess 
unconscious knowledge which is not acquired 
through the senses, but which will be found to be 
in their possession, though obtained without 
the instrumentality of the senses, by experience 
or by exercise. ' ' 

This "unconscious knowledge ' ' von Hartmann 
calls clairvoyance ; I would term it a psychic or 
sixth sense. It is not an "illative sense," 
which Cardinal Newman defines to be "a rea- 
soning faculty exercised by gifted and highly 
educated minds," nor the phronesis of Aris- 
totle, which, in his Nichomachean Ethics, he 
calls "human forethought." It is not external 
prevision, nor instinct, which is a natural im- 
pulse impelling animals to do certain acts lead- 
ing to their own welfare. Its nearest faculty 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 35 

is intuition, which is that which presents itself 
spontaneously to the mind without the assist- 
ance of reasoning or reflection. We know so 
little of this sixth sense, and the subject is so 
obscure and so mysterious, that it is extremely 
difficult to formulate any theory, lay down any 
principle, or advance any explanation. 

Its highest development is what is known in 
Scotland and in Scandinavia as ' ' second sight, ' ' 

This " sixth sense" is much more in evidence 
in certain countries than is generally supposed. 
An important argument in its favor is to be 
found in the testimony of eye-witnesses and 
statements of travelers bearing evidential 
value. 

In close affinity with this sense of orientation 
is the power of " second sight," which enables 
certain individuals to see what is occurring in 
distant places. Von Hartmann and Sir Bern- 
ard Burke (in his " Vicissitudes of Great 
Families") give many examples of "second 
sight," and Goethe records an instance of clair- 
voyance which fell within his own experience 
and which he confirmed down to the minutest 




36 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



detail. He calls second sight "a condition of 
the unconscious mind, an automatic action of 
the human organism." 

Facts connected with this class of phenomena 
are often ignored because they cannot be ex- 
plained from a materialistic side, are not in 
harmony with human experience, and cannot be 
proved by the inductive or experimental method, 
as though the last contention is not equally im- 
possible when applied to morals, social science, 
and politics. 

Nature everywhere is full of mysteries. Pro- 
fessor A. E. Wallace and other scientific ob- 
servers furnish in their writings interesting 
examples of correlation of colors with consti- 
tutional peculiarities among certain animals. 
No one has been able to explain why all male 
cats with blue eyes and white color are deaf, or 
why female cats with tortoise shell markings 
are unable to hear. Equally remarkable and 
impossible of explanation is that the young of 
white, pale-blue, yellow-tinted, or dun pigeons 
of all breeds are born naked, while the young of 
all other colors are covered with down. This 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 37 

is a case, as Professor Wallace remarks, where 
color seems of more physiological importance 
than all the structural differences between the 
varieties and breeds of pigeons. 

Nor can anyone give a reason why the ele- 
ment in yellow phosphorus is an active poison, 
while the same element in red is harmless. 
Again, Professor Tidy declares that peperine 
is the poison of all poisons to keep us awake, 
while morphine induces sleep, though to the 
chemist and analyst these two poisons are of 
identical composition. 

Dr. Johnson tells us in his book, "The Dis- 
eases of Tropical Climates," that in Virginia 
there is a plant locally known as the " paint- 
root/ ' which, when eaten by any other than 
black pigs, colors their bones pink and rots the 
hoofs, and that black pigs alone can thrive 
where the root grows. In the Tarentina, a re- 
gion in Spain, white sheep die if they eat the 
Hypericum Crispum — a species of St. John's 
wort, — while black sheep are immune to its ef- 
fects. That we cannot understand nor explain 
some phenomena of animal, or human life, is 



38 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

not an adequate reason for rejecting them as im- 
possibilities. 

# # # 

We have seen that animals are endowed with 
a highly developed sense of direction. It is 
now in order to inquire if man at any time in 
his history possessed this sense. That savages 
have some power of orientation in common with 
animals is admitted by Stanley, Burton, Bruce, 
Speake, and Grant. In civilized man this fac- 
ulty is only just traceable. The power de- 
clined as his self-conscious mind assumed con- 
trol, and is no longer essential. 

The African savage and the Australian bush- 
man, in common with animals, are still pos- 
sessed of an intuition or a sixth sense which in 
civilized man has, through disuse, been atro- 
phied. Ferdinand Verne, in his "African 
Wanderings,' ' says that among the Bashutos 
he met several men who were gifted with sec- 
ond sight and a sense of orientation. Apol- 
lonius Dyscolus, the Alexandrian rhetorician, 
states that, to his own knowledge, when a com- 
pany of Eoman soldiers, in the reign of Adrian 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 39 

(170 A. D.), were lost and perishing of thirst in 
the Libyan desert, a party of camel riders came 
to their rescue. The riders declared they were 
sent from their camp, thirty-five miles to the 
north, by the Cadi who in a trance saw and de- 
scribed the region and the perishing soldiers. 

Certain it is that to-day, as in past times, 
there are individuals who by sympathy, aflmity, 
or other unknown quality, are able instantane- 
ously to commune with intimate friends in other 
places, and this is practised by persons said 
to be en rapport, the one with the other. The 
limit to this we do not know, but it is not unlikely 
that telepathy, clairvoyance, orientation, and 
second sight are affinities. 

In his "Travels in North America,' ' Carver, 
a practical and experienced Englishman, says 
that, when he was with the Kilistinons — a Cree 
tribe — in 1767, famine threatened them unless 
some traders, whom they expected, came to 
their relief. A shaman or medicine chief, leav- 
ing his tent, called the people together and an- 
nounced that at a specified hour, the next day, 
a canoe would arrive and report the coming of 



40 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

the traders. Carver and the band were on the 
beach the following morning, and at the hour 
foretold by the shaman, a canoe appeared in 
the distance, and, after beaching, its paddlers 
announced to the people the coming of the flo- 
tilla. 

Sagard and the Jesuit historian and travel- 
ler, Charlevoix, record in their works equally 
singular instances. 

The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1866, published 
an article written by General J. M. Brown, who 
vouches for the accuracy of every detail of 
the narrative. In 1855, General, then Captain 
Brown, was commissioned to find a band of In- 
dians supposed to be hunting in the regions be- 
tween the Mackenzie and Copper-mine rivers. 
He was accompanied by a detail of voyageurs, 
many of whom through hunger, sickness, and 
fatigue abandoned the expedition. The Cap- 
tain was seriously thinking of giving up the 
search when, unexpectedly, he met three hunters 
of the very band he was seeking. The warriors 
told him that they were sent out the day before 
to meet him by their medicine chief, who told 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 



41 



them what route they should follow, the number 
of men in the party — and described their arms, 
dress, and personal appearance. When the 
Captain and his men were conducted to the vil- 
lage of the Indians, he asked to see the shaman 
who had despatched the messengers. The 
shaman — an intelligent middle-aged man — ap- 
peared, and when asked how he knew of the 
coming of the white men, answered: "I shut 
my eyes, my spirit told me to look ; I saw a place 
and four white men standing.' ' He could or 
would offer no other explanation. 

However much these examples of a sixth 
sense may tax our credulity, there are, in all 
literature, very many instances of a similar 
kind. 

Now, what is the explanation of these phe- 
nomena 1 Are they caused by the subliminal or 
subconscious mind of the operator? Psycholo- 
gists tell us that there are certain undefined 
functions of the mind which act independently 
of our senses and are outside our ordinary con- 
sciousness. Father Maher, in his "Psy- 
chology," says: "It ought not to be forgotten 



42 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

that besides the mental operations which re- 
veal themselves in consciousness, there is much 
evidence to establish the existence of vital ac- 
tivities of which we are not at times aware. 
. . . There is considerable dispute as to their 
exact nature and how their relation to the mind 
should be conceived. It is sufficient to call at- 
tention to their reality and to admit that, al- 
though unsusceptible of introspective observa- 
tion, some of these activities are intimately con- 
nected with our conscious life." 

There is apparently beneath our conscious 
mind a secondary and mysterious process of 
mind action, distinct from and independent of 
our primary self, as if there were two minds, 
a conscious and subconscious mind, each per- 
forming its own distinctive function. In or- 
dinary terms the difference between the two 
may be stated as follows : The one or objective 
mind takes cognizance of the visible or objec- 
tive world. It acts through the ^ve senses, and 
its highest function is that of reasoning. The 
subjective or subliminal mind perceives things 
or persons, as do clairvoyants, independently of 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 43 

the senses. It experiences as if by intuition. 
It sees without the eyes, the natural organs of 
vision, and, on occasions, apparently at least, 
leaves the body, travels to distant places, and, 
returning, records whom and what it has seen. 
This brings us to the phenomenon of bilocation, 
with which we will presently deal. 

There are so many well authenticated attesta- 
tions to the existence of this psychic power or 
sense that they cannot be disregarded by impar- 
tial minds. 

The man possessed of a sixth sense sees not 
only the direction in which he should travel, 
but the objective itself, his village, his house 
and its surroundings. The many examples re- 
corded in Enemoser's " History of Magic," and 
in Smedley's "Occult Sciences," of the reality 
of this sense, are persuasive if not convincing 
evidence of its existence. 

It is much easier to deny the possibility of the 
acts than to account for them, but examples such 
as those mentioned are too numerous and too 
strongly attested by honest and impartial wit- 
nesses to be consistently denied. It is more 



44 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



rational to accept the facts than to conclude 
in spite of overwhelming testimony that those 
who have seen and testify to the occurrences are 
enthusiasts who were deceived, or are deceiving 
others. 

There is such an intimate connection between 
clairvoyance, second sight, and orientation that 
it becomes difficult to draw lines of separation. 
Possibly, however, savage man and wild ani- 
mals have the five senses so highly developed 
and perfected that in the very long time de- 
manded for that development the psychic facul- 
ties or sense perceptions may have also ac- 
quired a development resulting in clairvoyance, 
conscious or subconscious. In attacking this 
hypothesis as simply a connected chain of 
opinions, those who undertake to destroy a link 
of the chain should supply its place by a 
stronger link. Now that comparative psy- 
chology is reaching the dignity of a science, 
there ought not to be insuperable obstacles in 
the path leading to a solution of the problem. 
It is time that a consistent theory should be 
propounded regarding the subject, if only on 



THE SENSE OF ORIENTATION 45 

the foundation of the old adage that even a 
faulty hypothesis is better than none at all and 
that all progress must have a point from which 
it moves forward. When confronted with the 
problems of clairvoyance and orientation we 
are tempted to exclaim with Renan, "On est pris 
de vertige — one's head is seized with dizziness. " 




"And while they were beholding him going up to 
heaven, behold two men stood by them in white gar- 
ments, who also said: Ye men of Galilee, why 
stand ye looking up to heaven? This Jesus who is 
taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you 
have seen him going into heaven. ' ' — Acts I, 10 sq. 



I 



IV 



WONDERS OF BILOCATION 

Villasenor's Report — The Spanish Nun — Case of Biloca- 
tion — An "Ecstatica" — Was She Transported to America? 
—The Indian Tribe Visited by Her— The "Demon Priests" 
— Benavide's Experience — His Statements — Declaration of 
the Nun — Signs and Wonders — Meaning of the Word 
Bilocation — Examples from Holy Writ — Angelic Appari- 
tions. 

The late Professor Cooke Taylor, in his work 
on " Occult Power,' ' contends that there are 
many examples in the history of occultism in 
favor of the belief which was held by many of 
the early Spanish missionaries to America, and 
by learned men at Madrid, that the white and 
bearded patriarch deified by the aborigines of 
Mexico as the "Fair God" who preached Chris- 
tianity to the natives in pre-Columbian times, 
was Saint Thomas the Apostle. From a tradi- 
tion coming down from the ages and still linger- 

47 



48 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



ing with the Latin races, the description and ap- 
pearance of Saint Thomas corresponded with 
the outward form and personality of the "Fair 
God" of the Mexicans. And did not the Sa- 
viour include this land when, after He rose from 
the tomb, He said to His Apostles : "You shall 
be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all 
Judea and Samaria and even to the uttermost 
parts of the earth"? Moreover, Saint Thomas 
was a twin, and, in the Nahual language, the 
last syllable in the name of the "Fair God" 
meant one of two born of the same mother and 
at the same time. Again the sixteenth cen- 
tury was closing the long period known as the 
"Ages of Faith," when alchemy, miracles, prod- 
igies, and legends yet held their own with the 
march of the human intellect. Nor from the 
authenticated cases with which theologians and 
students of occult subjects were, in those days, 
familiar, cases of bilocation, bicorporeity, and 
aerial transportation, was there anything in- 
credible in the living body being apparently in 
two places at the same time. They were fa- 
miliar with the eighth chapter of the "Acts of 



BILOCATION 49 

the Apostles," telling of the aerial transporta- 
tion of Philip from the road to Gaza to Azotus, 
and with the fourteenth chapter of Daniel re- 
cording the aerial and instantaneous flight of 
the prophet Habacuc from Judea to Babylon 
and from Babylon to Judea. 

"But how," you may ask, "was it possible 
for these men of learning and common sense to 
believe an absurdity, even an impossibility V 9 

But is bilocation — that is, the same person, 
at the same instant of time, appearing in two 
places, no matter how near or how remote — ab- 
surd, contradictory, and impossible? Well, let 
us appeal to history and then each one of us 
may form his own opinion. 

A word as to the historian. I know of no 
man who, in his day, stood higher in America 
for historical research, accuracy of citations, 
and incorruptible honesty than John Gilmary 
Shea. Dr. Shea's many and varied accom- 
plishments, his knowledge of languages, both 
ancient and modern, his diligence in prosecuting 
his investigations, his antiquarian lore, his care- 
ful discrimination in arranging and collecting 



50 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

the results of his investigations, his power of 
analysis and marvelous ability to enter upon the 
right path and thread his way through laby- 
rinths of confused statements and separate 
truth from falsehood, were recognized by Euro- 
pean and American scholars long before his 
death, in 1892. Now, when a man of his scholar- 
ship and historical honesty, after the most care- 
ful examination, lends his name to the support 
of that which appears to be incredible, this 
fact, to use the words of one of Shakespeare's 
characters, at least "must give us pause.' ' In 
Shea's "History of Catholic Missions Among 
the Indian Tribes of the United States" (Dun- 
igan, Ed. 1854) there is a very interesting chap- 
ter on the labors of the early Spanish mission- 
ary fathers in Arizona and New Mexico. Writ- 
ing of the wonderful labors and success of the 
missionaries with the tribes of New Mexico, 
Dr. Shea says: "Among those who con- 
tributed to bring about so happy a result are 
included the names of Fathers Benavides, Lo- 
pez and Salas at Tumanas, Father Ortego, and, 
we may add, the venerable Maria de Jesus 



BILOCATION 51 

d'Agreda (Spain), whose mysterious connec- 
tion with the New Mexican mission, whether now 
believed or not, certainly drew great attention 
to it at the time, and gave it an extraordinary 
impetus. Benavides met a tribe which no mis- 
sionary had as yet reached, and found them to 
his amazement instructed in the doctrines of 
Christianity. On inquiring, he learned that they 
had been taught by a lady whose form and dress 
they described. This account he (Benavides) 
gave in his work published in 1630. Subse- 
quently, Father Bernardine de Siena told him 
that the nun Maria d'Agreda had, eight years 
before, related to him apparitions of a similar 
character. Benavides then (on his return to 
Spain) visited her and was at once struck with 
her resemblance to the lady described by the 
Indians, and still more so by her account of 
the country and the labors of the missionaries, 
of which she related many remarkable inci- 
dents." 

The full history of this extraordinary case of 
bilocation is given by the scholarly Benedictine, 
Dom Gueranger. I deem the subject of such 



52 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

importance in association with the possibility 
of St. Thomas or St. Brendan teaching Chris- 
tianity to the Maya tribes of pre-Columbian Yu- 
catan, that I will condense it from the French 
work. 

Remember, however, that I do not adopt the 
opinion that St. Thomas, the Apostle, did visit 
America; I merely contend that the Spanish 
friars and Spanish writers had plausible rea- 
sons, supported by the sworn testimony of un- 
impeachable witnesses in analogous cases, for 
believing that Quetzalcoatle, the "Fair God," 
was the Apostle, St. Thomas. 

I opened this chapter with St. Luke 's account 
of the Ascension of our Lord in order to show 
that human bodies and a human language were 
given by God to the Angels who "stood by them 
(the Apostles) in white garments." This ex- 
ample will be interesting when I come to treat 
of the singular case of Maria d'Agreda, the 
Franciscan nun. 

When Frederico Villasenor returned from his 
expedition, in 1748, he included in his "Teatro 
Americano" a brief but illuminating report of 



BILOCATION 53 

the Indians then living in New Mexico. "The 
natives,' ' he tells us, "are comfortably clothed 
in garments woven by themselves; they are 
an industrious and contented people. The 
churches, built under the direction of the Fran- 
ciscan Fathers, are as fine and imposing as 
those in the rural districts of Southern Europe, 
and the services for the Indians as grand and as 
scrupulously carried out as in Spain. There 
are twenty-seven parishes established, averag- 
ing one hundred families to a mission/' 

Included among the names of the zealous mis- 
sionaries who accomplished these results is, 
strange to say, that of a Spanish nun, whom the 
Fathers had never seen. She was known in her 
community as Maria de Jesus, and was one of 
that privileged class of souls in whom the effects 
of original sin or the first transgression seemed 
to be almost effaced, and who are admitted, 
while still in the flesh, to that intimate union with 
God which the elect enjoy only in the beatific 
state. 

In the lives of the Saints we perceive that 
each one of them, when he or she was, by sublim- 




54 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

ity and intensity of prayer and meditation, ad- 
mitted into privileged union with God, was 
distinguished for what is called by ascetical 
writers a "particular devotion." Maria de 
Jesus, or, as she is at times referred to by her 
contemporaries, Maria d'Agreda, was, during 
the waning years of her conventual life, offering 
to God her prayers, mortifications, and suffer- 
ings for the conversion of the American tribes. 
The conversion of the Indians of New Mexico 
was a particular object of her private devotions. 
One morning, while in intimate union with her 
Saviour, she received a revelation that God 
would soon confer upon the missionaries and 
Indians of New Mexico a special favor. Then 
it was that this holy nun experienced for the 
first time in her pious life these visitations, or, 
as Dom Gueranger writes, "phenomena of 
grace,' ' which entitle her to be ranked among 
the apostles of these idolatrous lands. She be- 
came an "Ecstatica" and, while under miracu- 
lous influence, experienced sensations like 
unto one carried on an aerial journey to 






BILOCAT10N 



55 



unkown and distant regions. The climate of 
the country to which she was transported was 
not unlike that of her own Castile, but she was 
surrounded by men, women, and children the 
like of whom she had never looked upon. The 
vegetation was unfamiliar, and there were no 
cities, towns, great buildings or bridges. Im- 
pelled by a mysterious inner voice or influence, 
she began to teach the strange people the doc- 
trines of Christianity, and though she ex- 
pounded the mysteries of religion in Spanish, 
her audience listened attentively and seemed to 
understand her speech. Many times she re- 
lapsed into the ecstatic state, and on each occa- 
sion was transported across a great waste of 
water into a region where dwelt the people to 
whom she was commissioned to preach. She, 
at last, succeeded in winning to Christianity 
all the members of the tribe, including the chiefs 
and shamans or " demon priests," as she called 
them. "While among these Indians she saw, 
afar off, the Franciscan missionaries reaping 
a harvest of souls like unto those she was in- 



56 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

structing. She counseled her converts to dis- 
patch messengers to these missionaries and ask 
for a priest to return with them. 

It was in the year 1622 that Maria de Jesus, 
in ecstasy, experienced the sensations of aerial 
transportation and in the same year instructed 
the tribe. " Before this time," writes Dom 
Gueranger, "the Franciscans laboring among 
the Indians of New Mexico had not reaped a 
harvest of souls commensurate with their zeal 
and their expectations." One morning, as one 
of the Fathers, on the mission of San Augustin 
de Isleta, was coming out of his adobe church, 
he was met by five Indians whom he had never 
before seen. Their speech was that of his own 
mission tribe, with dialectic variations. They 
claimed to have come from beyond the Eio Pe- 
cos, said they came as messengers sent by their 
chief who asked for a priest to live among 
them, and concluded by requesting to be bap- 
tised. The missionary inquired the name of 
their tribe, in what direction their country lay 
and what river flowed through it. He added he 
could not accede to their request for baptism 



BILOCATION 



57 



until they were instructed in the faith. They 
replied that they and the members of their 
tribe were already instructed; that a woman 
strangely dressed had visited their people and 
made known to them the life and doctrines of 
Jesus Christ; that her visits to them were 
many, and that it was she who had told them 
to come to the missionaries. Where she lived 
and how she came they did not know. 

The missionary — Father Alonzo de Bena- 
vides — examined the messengers in the doc- 
trines of Christianity and found them well in- 
structed. He pressed them for a description 
of the mysterious woman, but the Indians after 
describing her dress and appearance, could 
only repeat that they had never seen any one 
like her. Benavides, with a companion, started 
that afternoon with the Indians for their dis- 
tant village. When, after three days' travel, 
he entered their village, he was received with the 
most lively manifestations of joy and, to his 
amazement, found that all the adult members of 
the tribe were well instructed in Christian doc- 
trines. 



58 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



"But," I almost hear you exclaim, "this is in- 
credible if not absurd." Well, read on. Fa- 
ther Alonzo de Benavides was satisfied from the 
description he received that the lady was a Span- 
ish nun. In 1630 he was in Seville on business 
of his community in New Mexico, and took ad- 
vantage of his visit to discover, if possible, the 
personality and the dwelling of the mysterious 
woman. He made known to the Superior Gen- 
eral of the Franciscan Order in Spain — the 
Very Eev. Bernadine de Sienna — the history of 
the miraculous conversion of the Indians and 
his desire to trace the identity of the nun. The 
Superior had already made the acquaintance of 
Maria de Jesus and had heard of her ecstasies. 
It occurred to him that, possibly, this saintly 
nun might be the privileged soul referred to by 
Father Benavides. He furnished him with let- 
ters to the superior of the convent and to Maria 
de Jesus herself, in which he begged her to give 
to the missionary any information in her pos- 
session bearing on the subject of his quest. 

Soon after Benavides entered the city of 
Agreda he obtained an interview with the 






BILOCATION 



59 



"Ecstatica." As she was a member of a clois- 
tered community, he was granted this privilege 
through the influence of the Provincial of the 
Franciscans, Sebastian Marzilla, and of Francis 
de la Torre, confessor to the nun. When Bena- 
vides was ushered into the presence of Maria, 
he handed her a letter from the Superior Gen- 
eral of her order, commanding her by her vow 
of obedience to answer Benavides' questions, 
and to reveal what she knew having any bear- 
ing on the purport of his visit. 

The example, or fact, which I am now about 
to record is of, apparently, the double presence 
of one personality ; that is, the same person ap- 
pearing in different places at the same time, as 
in the instances recorded in the lives of Saints 
Francis Xavier and Alphonsus Liguori. This 
phenomenon carries us at one stride into the sub- 
ject of bilocation or bicorporeity. "But is not 
this an absurdity, an impossibility ?" I an- 
swer: "Undoubtedly it is, if the word be ac- 
cepted in its narrowest and rigorous sense. 
But bending the meaning of the word a little, 
bilocation takes its place with admissible pos- 



60 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



sibilities and, leaving the regions of the absurd, 
enters the exalted circle of thaumaturgy or the 
sphere of the marvelous. 

Every discussion about any subject will best 
proceed from an examination of its name or of 
that by which it is generally known. In the 
name we have the true declaration of the inner- 
most nature of anything ; we have a witness to 
that which the universal sense of men, finding 
expression in language, has ever felt to lie at its 
heart. If we would learn to know anything in- 
timately, we must begin by finding the name 
which it bears. Thus, what we commonly term 
miracles, are in Sacred Scripture called "won- 
ders," sometimes " signs,' ' often " powers,' ' or 
simply "works," or "mighty works." An ex- 
ample drawn from one of our Divine Lord's 
acts of kindness may help to illustrate how a 
"miracle" may at once include all the above 
terms. The healing of the man "sick of the 
palsy" (Mark I, 3), for example, was a wonder, 
for they who beheld it "were all amazed"; it 
was a "power," for the man, hearing the words 
of Christ, "arose, took up his bed and went his 



BILOCATION 



61 



way in the sight of them all"; it was a "sign," 
for it proved that One greater than men thought 
him to be, was among them ; it stood in connec- 
tion with a higher personality, of whom the 
"sign," and the seal, and the cure was wrought 
that those who witnessed it might "know that 
the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins." 

Now, the meaning of the word bilocation, ac- 
cording to masters of ascetic theology, is that 
an apparition, which is visible to one or to many 
individuals, of a person known to be living 
hundreds of miles distant from where the ap- 
parition appears, is that of a good or evil angel 
which assumes a body like unto that of the liv- 
ing person and clothes the same as those worn 
by that person. 

Bilocation, then, may mean the same body 
apparently occupying two spaces; or it may 
mean two bodies identically the same, which is 
called bi-corporeity ; or, again, the same body, 
as in the case of the prophet Ezekiel (XI, 24; 
XXVII, 1; XL, 1, 2) and of Habacuc (Dan. 
XIV, 32), may be transported with such intense 



62 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



velocity from place to place as to lead to a con- 
viction of a "replicatio corporis" or a double 
body. If at any time you have read Charles F. 
Lummis' book, "In the Land of Poco Tiempo," 
or the "Occult World," by E. T. Sennett, or, 
better still, "Les Hauts Phenomenes," by 
Gougnet Des Mousseaux, you must be familiar 
with authenticated examples of aerial trans- 
portation. 

And now having, in a measure, "blazed the 
trail," let us give ear to the wonderful narra- 
tive from the lips of Maria de Jesus. 

With becoming diffidence, yet with the ut- 
most candor, the nun unfolded the story of her 
ecstasies, beginning with the first visitation she 
experienced and recording, as she advanced, a 
remarkable series of ecstatic experiences. 
She frankly confessed that she was unable to 
explain the process — "el modo" — by which her 
spirit appeared and was able to exert influence 
at so great a distance. 

After having been privileged with her con- 
fidence Benavides began to question her in de- 
tail on the distant regions of New Mexico, — with 



BILOCATION 



63 



which he was intimately familiar. He exam- 
ined her on the topography of the country, the 
landmarks of the locality she claimed to have 
visited, the dress and habits of the tribe she 
converted and on minute particulars of the land 
and its people, with which only one who had 
lived for some time in the country could be at 
all familiar. To his astonishment he found 
her as well acquainted as himself with every- 
thing concerning the particular village and its 
people. She was not only familiar with the 
topography of the country, but told him the 
names of the Indian tribes and the names of the 
towns and rivers which could only be known to 
one who had lived with the tribes. She stated, 
moreover, that she had many times seen the 
priest and his companions, corroborating her 
statements by furnishing the names of places 
he had visited on certain days, and supplying 
minute details of the missionary's life. 

Benavides, intending to reduce to writing not 
only the strange history of the miraculously con- 
verted tribe, but also his interview with Maria 
d'Agreda, ventured to question her critically 



64 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

on the means — "el modo" — by which she was 
able to visit the Indians. He put a straight 
question to her by asking if she was there phy- 
sically or in person. In answer to this inquiry 
she showed apparent diffidence and reserve, but 
later in a declaration which she made and wrote 
out she expressed her opinion in the words of 
St. Paul when recounting for the Corinthians 
his wonderful experience: "I know a man in 
Christ, whether in the body, I know not, or out 
of the body, I know not. . . . caught up into 
Paradise, and heard secret words, which it is 
not granted to man to utter.' ' (2 Cor., XII, 2- 
4). She concluded her statement as follows : 

"That which appears to me to be more cer- 
tain as regards the manner by which these oc- 
currences took place, is that an angel from 
heaven appeared among these people under 
my figure, preached to and instructed them and 
that I saw here, while in the ecstatic state, all 
that there happened in the country so far 
away. ' ' 

I deem this remarkable case of such import- 
ance in association with the Mexican tradition 



BILOCATION 65 

of the "Fair God," or white patriarch, who, 
in pre-Columbian times preached Christianity 
in Mexico and Yucatan, that I feel warranted in 
introducing additional authorities in support of 
the contentions of Gilmary Shea and Dom 
Gueranger. In the life of that beloved Fran- 
ciscan priest, Junipero Serra, the Apostle of 
California, by Palacio, there is published a let- 
ter of Benavides recording the miraculous con- 
version and also a letter from Maria dA^greda. 
Benavides ' "Memorial" was printed in Madrid, 
1630. The whole history of the case is told in 
"La Mistica Ciudad de Dios." The title of 
Dom Gueranger 's book is: "Maria d'Agreda 
et la Cite Mystique de Dieu. ' ' 

When Benavides ' Memorial appeared, several 
eminent writers attacked, whereas others de- 
fended the reality of the apparition. The dis- 
cussion filled many volumes, but Rome has given 
no decision, and we are free to believe or not be- 
lieve the history, just as we are the writings of 
Plutarch or the younger Pliny. To me it ap- 
pears to be an established case of clairvoyant 
trance, and in a process of canonization would 
not, I am of the opinion, have a place with the 



66 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

"dona supematuralia," nor among proved 
miracles. 

The possibility of an angel appearing in hu- 
man form and instructing the tribe is not open 
to contradiction. The Scriptures record many 
instances of such angelic apparitions. We have 
a notable example in the case of the angel who 
accompanied young Tobias to Eages, the City 
of the Medes. 



These Hindoos of Malabar, when asked if, in their 
land, there were apparitions or phantoms, replied: 
"Yes, but we look upon them as evil spirits. We be- 
lieve them to be the souls of those who committed sui- 
cide, or perished by a violent death. Night is their 
favorite time for appearing. They seduce the weak 
minded and the curious and tempt others in a thou- 
sand different ways. They aim to do all the injury 
they can to human beings. ' ' 

J. Gorres, "La Mystique," Vol. Ill, p. 63. 



BICORPOREITY 

Classification of Phenomena — Rita of Cascia — Gorres — 
His History of her Aerial Transportation — Case of the 
Blessed Lidwine — Example from the Life of St. John of 
Copertino — The Apparition at the Bedside — Wonderful Ex- 
ample of Bicorporeity Recounted by Count des Mousseaux 
— Double Appearance of a Living Man — Opinion of St. 
Thomas. 

The phenomena of bilocation, bicorporeity and 
aerial transportation may be classified into 
separate groups, having an intimate affinity or 
relationship to one another. 

For example, a person may be carried with 
incredible velocity to a distant place and then 
the systeme moteur or moving agent acts in an 
especial manner in producing wonders of this 
order. Perhaps the most voluminous and ac- 
credited writer on Christian Mysticism, as con- 
trasted with naturalism and rationalism, was 
Joseph von Gorres, who wrote ' ' Die Christliche 

69 



70 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

Mystik." He was a teacher at the University 
of Munich, a writer of marked distinction, and 
one of the most scholarly men of his time, say 
from 1798 to 1848. 

Dealing with the authenticated case of the 
Blessed Eita of Cascia, he writes in his "Mys- 
tik": "We record as an example of aerial 
transportation the flight of Rita of Cascia, who 
enjoyed the privilege of passing through closed 
doors.' ' This holy woman desiring, after the 
death of her husband, to become an Augustinian 
nun, was refused admission to the community. 
She then appealed to God in prayer, and while 
she prayed, was transported through the air, 
carried into a convent and deposited in the midst 
of cloistered nuns. Great was the amazement 
of the nuns when she appeared, for they knew 
all entrances to the building were barred. 
When she made known who she was, how she 
had been transported, and her wish to dedicate 
herself to the service of God in prayer and 
adoration, she was admitted to the privileges of 
the community. 

Another example is that of St. Peter Rogala, 



BICORPOREITY 



71 




who, in sight of a multitude of people, was for 
three hours suspended in the air, and sur- 
rounded by such a luminous halo of glory, that 
those who saw him thought his body was on 
fire. 

Facts of the second class: The person con- 
fined to a certain locality, is in spirit carried 
to another place and in that place accomplishes 
the will of God as did Ezekiel and Habacuc. A 
touching and beautiful example of this second 
order of phenomena are the mystic voyages of 
the Blessed Lidwine, who in her aerial flights 
was often accompanied by her guardian angel. 
One day, while her spirit was passing from 
church to church in the City of Eome, she suf- 
fered as if thorns had entered her hand, though 
her body remained in her own room and did 
not accompany her in her flight. The next day, 
returning to her natural self, her finger pained 
her greatly and, in her finger, the prick of the 
thorn was quite visible. 

Facts of the third order: Among the ex- 
periences of the third class are those of actual 
bilocation. Here we find the individual is in a 



72 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

particular place and is seen and spoken to by 
others and, at the same time, is seen elsewhere 
and acts as if he was really and substantially 
present. This, for instance, was the experi- 
ence of St. John of Copertino, who lived in the 
village of Assisi, Italy. When his mother lay 
at death's door, in Copertino, she bewailed the 
absence of her son, and in the intensity of her 
yearning for him cried aloud: "Oh, my son, 
my son! Shall I never again meet you on 
earth V ' At once the room in which she was dy- 
ing blazed with exceptional illumination, and the 
mother beholding her son coming through the 
flaming light to her bed, extended her arms and 
exclaimed in the hearing of those present: 
' ' Joseph ! my son ! ' ' Now on this same day 
and at the same hour there were those in Assisi 
who saw Joseph leave his house hurriedly and 
enter the church, ostensibly to pray. Alarmed 
at his excited appearance and haste, one of 
the men followed and asked him: "Is there 
anything the matter V "Yes, yes," he an- 
swered, "my poor mother is dying.' ' The 
neighbor went out, leaving him with God. 



BICORPOREITY 



73 



This apparition of the living man by his 
mother's side at Copertino was confirmed by 
letters which, soon after the death of the mother, 
were received in Assisi, and the fact was after- 
wards proved by the sworn testimony of 
those who saw the saintly man at the bedside of 
his mother. 

Let it, however, be understood that, according 
to the decision of the learned Pope Benedict 
XIV, and the statements of eminent theolo- 
gians, these prodigies, and others mentioned in 
ecclesiastical histories and biographies and in 
the " Lives of the Saints' ' are not to be classed 
with the miracles so intimately associated in the 
New Testament with the foundation and expan- 
sion of Christianity. 

We may or may not accept them. But if 
the evidence in their favor carries legal weight, 
if the witnesses testifying to what they claimed 
to have seen and heard are known to be hon- 
est men of good, common sense, are reputed 
among their neighbors to be respectable and 
trustworthy, and can have no reason for misrep- 
resenting what they witnessed and heard, then 



74 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

a jury of their countrymen will believe them. 

Take, for instance, the case critically exam- 
ined and scrupulously gone into by Count Des 
Mousseaux in his extraordinary book, "Les 
Hauts Phenomenes, ' ' and accepted by him as 
an actual occurrence which happened in his own 
lifetime. 

" Early in 1864," writes the Count, "I met 
in Paris the Eeverend Father Palgrave, form- 
erly a cavalry officer in the French service, who 
resigned his command and became a Jesuit mis- 
sionary in India. Among the passengers who 
sailed on the same ship with Father Palgrave, 
when he was returning from India in 1857, was 
an English officer, who was sailing for England 
on furlough or military leave of absence. After 
they had been at sea some fifteen days, the of- 
ficer said to the captain in the hearing of Pere 
Palgrave : 

" ' Captain, who is this stranger whom you 
are hiding from us?' 

11 'You're joking/ answered the captain. 

" 'No, on my honor, I saw him yesterday for 
the first time, but he hasn't appeared today.' 



BICORPOREITY 75 

" 'Why, what do you mean, are you serious? 
If so, explain yourself.' " 

" 'Well, be it so/ spoke the officer ; 'last night, 
when I was thinking of turning in, I saw a 
strange man make the rounds of the ship, open 
doors and close them, and shake his head, as if 
to say, 'what I am looking for is not here.' He 
then approached me, looked me over and re- 
tired with an apologetic air.' 

" 'And what,' asked the Captain, smiling, 
'might be the appearance, the dress and the age 
of this manf , 

"The officer described the stranger even to 
the minutest detail." 

' ' ' Good God, ' exclaimed the Captain, ' if what 
you say be true, then that man is my father, he 
cannot be another.' — 

"When the ship arrived in Liverpool, the 
Captain learned that his father was dead, and 
that it was after the apparition was seen that he 
had died; but that on the evening when the 
French officer saw him, he was for a time de- 
lirious and then became unconscious. Eegain- 
ing his senses, he said to those by his bedside : 



76 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

" ' Where do you think I have been since I 
fell asleep? I crossed over a great part of the 
sea, visited my son's ship, searched high and low 
for him, but didn 't see him. ' ' ' 

Assuming the truth of this relation, we nat- 
urally ask ourselves, "Did the soul of the dying 
man leave his body?" 

St. Thomas, the "Angel of the Schools,' ' 
would answer: "No. The will to act which 
belongs to the soul is shut up in the body, to 
which the soul is united. Where the body is at 
one time, the will is with it. ' ' 

I can only repeat with the Psalmist that "We 
are fearfully and wonderfully made. ' ' 



VI 

DUAL PERSONALITY 

Does Bilocation Involve a Contradiction? — The Voice of 
History — Apparition of Ananias — Saul of Tarsus — Case of 
St. Alphonsus Liguori — His Double Presence — Authorities 
Supporting its Reality — Statement of Eliphas Levi, the 
Spiritist — Acts of the Canonization of Saints — Extract 
from the Roman Breviary — St. Francis Xavier — A Won- 
derful Case of Bilocation — Testimony of Eye- Witnesses — 
Remarks. 

That bilocation contradicts all the properties 
of matter, so far as our understanding has 
reached, and is physically impossible, is the 
unanimous conclusion of all scientific material- 
ists. Whether or not it is absolutely, or meta- 
physically impossible (and by this I mean 
whether it involves an intrinsic contradiction, so 
that by no exercise of power, even omnipotent 
power, could the same body be, at the same in- 
stant of time, in two places) is a subject too 
abstruse to be discussed in these pages. 

77 



78 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

The distinguished philosophic writer, Father 
Dalgairns, in his treatise on "Holy Commun- 
ion," where he deals with the extension of mat- 
ter, contends for the possibility of absolute bilo- 
cation and, if you take an interest in. the subject, 
I advise you to read his book. Just now, how- 
ever, it will be of more interest for us to con- 
sult history for authentic examples of the phe- 
nomenon, leaving the philosophy of the mysteri- 
ous and occult for theologians and metaphysi- 
cians. 

I regard the apparition of Ananias recorded 
in the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles 
as a very remarkable instance in the history of 
bilocation and the first of its kind to be found 
in Holy Writ. 

Saul of Tarsus, — canonized as St. Paul, the 
Apostle, — retired by the command of the "Lord 
Jesus who appeared to me on the way," to 
the house of a disciple named Judas in the 
"street that is called Strait." While alone in 
his room, Saul "saw a man named Ananias 
coming in and laying his hands upon him that he 
might receive his sight." Saul, after our Lord 



DUAL PERSONALITY 79 

Jesus Christ appeared and spoke to him on the 
way, ' ' rose from the ground and, his eyes being 
open, he saw nothing,' ' that is to say, he was 
blind. Now at the time when this occurred 
Ananias was in another part of the city and 
did not for three days after Saul saw him ' i com- 
ing and laying his hands upon him, ,, actually in 
person enter the room and say to Saul : ' i Saul, 
brother, the Lord Jesus hath sent me . . . that 
thou mayest receive thy sight and be filled with 
the Holy Ghost." 

This scriptural case I regard as a true ex- 
ample of bilocation, that is a living man filling 
space in a certain place and his simulacrum or 
other self actually appearing, at the same time, 
in another. Now let us take an instance or two 
from the lives of the Saints. 

Early one morning St. Alphonsus Liguori, 
bishop and founder of the Redemptorists, or, to 
be precise, the ' ' Congregation of the Most Holy 
Redeemer,' ' entered his chapel, as was his daily 
wont, to say mass. Suddenly, as he was pre- 
paring to vest for the Holy Sacrifice, he was 
overcome with weakness and his face took on a 



80 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

look of sadness and wonder. In silence he 
walked to his chair and sat down. At once his 
head fell forward and rested on his breast. 
There was no movement of the lips in prayer, 
there was no rising or falling of the bosom ; the 
eyes of the venerable man closed as if in sleep, 
and the diverse functions of life were, to all 
outward seeming, suspended. 

He remained in this state of immobility for 
hours, and no one ventured to trouble his re- 
pose. When he regained consciousness, he rang 
his chair bell and rose to robe for mass. When 
the brother who usually served his mass en- 
tered the chapel he told Alphonsus he was too 
ill to offer up the Sacrifice. At once the chapel 
was filled with the priests and domestics of the 
house, who had watched with anxiety the end 
of the cataleptic sleep. When Alphonsus, in 
surprise, asked a reason for their presence, he 
was told that for many hours he was as a 
dead man. "Ah! yes indeed, , ' he answered, 
"but I have come from the bedside of the Pope, 
who is now dead." Those who heard him 
deemed this to be the hallucination of a sick 



DUAL PERSONALITY 



81 



man; but when the report of the death of Pope 
Clement came to the bishop 's city of St. Agatha, 
it corresponded exactly with the day and the 
hour, September 22, 1774, when Alphonsus had 
returned to himself. 

Novaes, in his " History of the Popes," re- 
cording this phenomenon, writes: "Clement 
XIV expired on September 22 at the thirteenth 
hour (7 a.m.). There were present at his 
death the superiors general of the Augustinians, 
Dominicans, Observantines and Conventuals; 
and with them, in their midst, was the saintly 
Alphonsus de' Liguori, who, though his body 
was elsewhere, was miraculously in the chamber 
of death. The presence of Alphonsus was cited 
at the judicial process for his canonization and 
was accepted and approved by the Holy Congre- 
gation of Rites" (St. Liguori, Vererdier, 1833, 
p. 318). 

To the weight of the authority of the Congre- 
gation of Rites allow me to add this declaration 
of the spiritist, Eliphas Levi, who apostatized 
from the Church and entered the ranks of her 
enemies: "There is no fact of history," he 



82 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

writes, "more incontestable or more effectually 
proved than the fact of the real and visible 
presence of Father Alphonsus de ' Liguori at the 
bedside of the Pope when in his last agony, 
while the same Alphonsus was in ecstasy and 
in prayer in a remote district of Italy. ' ' ( M Kit- 
ual of Spiritism," Vol. I, p. 206.) 

I am here this morning in the Mexican town 
of Tlaxcala. It is exactly 9 :15 a. m., July 8. 
Let us suppose for the sake of elucidation that 
at precisely the same hour and day I entered 
your office, sat down, and spoke to you, then dis- 
appeared bidding you good-bye. Would you 
not be ready to testify on oath that at 9 :15, July 
8, 1 was in your office and that you held conver- 
sation with me I But the proprietor of the little 
fonda where I now am, will swear that at that 
hour, day, and date I was in his hostelry. To 
be in a given place at a particular time and an 
exact duplicate or simulacrum of the same per- 
son to be in another place many miles away at 
exactly the same time ; to be not only the double 
of the same person, but the identification to be 
made by many persons and the apparition to be 



DUAL PERSONALITY 



83 



distinctly and sensibly present, this is what ap- 
pears to me is what is meant by bilocation in 
its rigorous sense. It is, as it were, the ghost 
of a living person seen abroad while the same 
person is in his own house. 

In those rigorously accurate and severe com- 
pilations known under the title of "Acts of the 
Canonization of Saints," are found incontro- 
vertible examples of bilocation. The great and 
imperishable Catholic Church is wisdom itself, 
visible to us under a sensible form, and here 
are her words addressed to us in the Eoman 
Breviary for the Feast of St. Francis Xavier: 
* ' He had the gift of bilocation, he wrought won- 
derful miracles while living, and in death his 
body triumphed over putrefaction. ' ' 

The fact I am now about to record is to be 
found in the "Vie de Saint Frangois Xavier," 
by Pere Bouhours (Avignon, 1817, Vol. II). Let 
me introduce this wonderful example of biloca- 
tion by a statement made by the author in his 
preface to this very readable volume. He 
writes : "No miracles were ever examined with 
greater care, or were subjected to a more crucial 



84 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

test, than those presented for the canonization 
of Saint Francis. ' ' 

Early in November, 1551, the ship on which 
the saintly missionary was sailing from Japan 
to India entered the Straits of Korea. Early 
one morning the vessel rode into one of those 
fierce and prolonged storms which carry fear 
to the hearts of seasoned mariners. A hurri- 
cane swept the decks, carried away the sails, 
tore out the masts, and threatened destruction 
to the ship and all on board. Then Francis 
fell upon his knees in prayer, when presently the 
sea went down and the ship, water-logged, 
floated helplessly. The crew got out the boat 
and began to tow the ship to the nearest land. 
While they were rowing the storm again rose, 
the tow-line was snapped and the oarsmen and 
their boat swept out to sea. The tempest grew 
to a tornado, when the holy man Francis retired 
to his room and invoking the Holy Name, be- 
sought Jesus Christ by the five wounds in- 
flicted on Him when nailed to the cross to save 
them. As he prayed, the storm passed beyond 
them. The sailors on the ship were now over- 



DUAL PERSONALITY 85 

whelmed with sorrow for the fate of their com- 
panions driven out to sea. Then Francis said 
to them: "Be of good cheer, my friends, for 
before the expiration of the third day the daugh- 
ter that is lost will return to her mother.' ' 

Their water-logged wreck rose and sank with 
the waves, and yet no boat returned. In vain 
they scanned the horizon and saw no sign of a 
boat. They were giving up all hope, when 
again Francis cheered their drooping spirits: 
"Have courage, my children,' ' he pleaded, "I 
tell you they are returning to us." Then he 
retired to his berth and, once again, fell upon 
his knees in prayer. Presently the "lookout" 
shouted, i l They are coming, ' ' and every eye took 
in the rowing men. A cry of joy greeted the 
saved men, who, reaching the side of the ship, 
mounted and were embraced by their compan- 
ions. When the hand-shakings and congratula- 
tions were over, the quartermaster gave orders 
to have the returned boat brought on deck. 
"Wait, wait," cried one of the rescued men, 
"Father Francis, where is he? He has not 
come aboard." The sailors who remained on 



86 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

the ship, hearing the man and his companions 
thus express themselves, said one to the other: 
"The poor fellows are out of their minds from 
long suffering and starvation." But in vain 
they tried to disabuse the minds of the returned 
men by pointing to the empty boat, and by assur- 
ing them that Father Francis was now on board 
and had, at no time, left the ship. To the 
amazement of every one the saved men persisted 
in asserting that from morning till night and 
from night till morning, Francis was with them 
for three days. "No, No," they exclaimed, 
"we had no fear of being lost or of perishing, 
for the holy man was with us and told us we 
would be saved." 

This is the case as recorded in the Life of St. 
Francis Xavier by Pere Bouhours, — and in the 
Lives of the Saint by Massei and the learned 
English Jesuit, Henry James Coleridge. It 
was proved by the sworn declarations of the 
captain and crew of the vessel and the rescued 
men, and was accepted as a fact in the process 
for the canonization of Francis Xavier. 



DUAL PERSONALITY 87 

After proving that bilocation was miraculous 
the "Relatio" of canonization goes on to say: 
"Many of the witnesses say that Xavier ap- 
peared to those who were in the boat tossed 
about by the waves, and that when they were 
taken up into the ship Xavier had been all the 
time with them in the boat, and that they were 
filled with astonishment when they found that 
at the same time he had been on the ship." 

It remains now to reconcile this incontestable 
fact with our reason and with human experi- 
ence. And we do so by acknowledging that, as 
in the case of Ananias, an angel from heaven, 
for three days, assumed the voice, form, and 
dress of Francis, and so complete and perfect 
was the personification that it was impossible 
for human eye or ear to distinguish between 
the Saint and the spirit. Francis, by whose 
holiness of life and fervent prayer the miracle 
was accomplished, was not at the same time on 
the ship and on the long boat. It is possible 
that when in his first ecstatic prayer in his 
cabin on the ship, he saw clairvoyantly the angel 



88 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



(his duplicated self) on the boat among the 
drifting men, and was assured by an inward 
voice that the men would be saved. When he 
went on deck he carried with him the divine as- 
surance that all would be well, and with this cer- 
titude he fearlessly announced to the ship 's crew 
their own safety and the return of those they 
thought lost. 

Allow me, even though I may weary you, to 
enlarge somewhat on the phenomenon of bilo- 
cation. I know that for those unfamiliar with 
mystic literature, prodigies of this order are 
as opposed to their established opinions and as 
puzzling to the mind as are the intricacies of 
differential calculus to the uneducated, or the 
action of electric forces, the instantaneous 
change wrought on certain liquids by the infu- 
sion of a reactive, the Plutonian theory of the 
imperceptible rising of mountains, or the in- 
candescence of the globe to the undeveloped 
mind of the sheep-herder. 

I am convinced that in this age when Satanism 
assumes a most alluring and seductive guise, it 
is well for those who have the time, the means, 



DUAL PERSONALITY 89 

and the opportunity to devote some study to 
the strange manifestations of occult science as 
presented to us early in the morning of the 
twentieth century. 



"Man, by his transgression, allowed himself to be 
overcome by the evil spirit. Now, St. Peter informs 
us that 'by whom man is overcome, of the same also 
is he the slave. ' This dominion consists in the power 
of demons to tempt us by obsessing our bodies, by 
obsession to molest and vex man in divers ways, and 
by possession violently and despotically to turn his 
victim into a tool or instrument, through which he 
produces very strange and startling effects." — J. God- 
frey Eaupert, "The Supreme Problem." 



vn 

SPIRITISM, ANCIENT AND MODERN 

Spiritism and Immortality — The Cult does not Prove 
Immortality for the Soul of Man — Seeking Truth from the 
Dead — St. Paul's Statement — Spiritists Cannot Prove that 
the Dead Appear or Answer Questions — Statements of Mr. 
James H. Hyslop — Spiritists on the Divinity of Jesus 
Christ — Spiritism Condemned by the Judaic and Catholic 
Churches — The Old and New Testaments and Evocation 
of Spirits^ — The Wonders of Spiritism — Spiritism and 
Christianity. 

Many modern writers on Spiritism, amongst 
them scientific men of high standing, maintain 
that Spiritism proves, by experimentation with 
the dead, the immortality of the soul. 

Believers in the dangerous and occult heresy 
of Spiritism have been insisting on this immor- 
tality argument or proof since Eobert Dale 
Owen wrote his " Footfalls on the Boundary of 
Another World.' ' Even the orthodox reviewer 

91 



92 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

who, a few years ago, reviewed for the ' i Cath- 
olic World' ' Father Searle's treatise on " Spirit 
Phenomena, ' ' leaned to the opinions of Owen 
and the scientists mentioned. 

This immortality plea was also Daniel Homes' 
defense when accused of holding communica- 
tion with the devil, and is to-day repeated, iter- 
ated and reiterated by Spiritists in their litera- 
ture, lectures, and conversations. 

Until it be proved that the spirits which an- 
swer the call and hold converse with human 
beings are souls of men or women who once 
lived in the flesh, and are not companions of 
those who said to our Blessed Lord: "What 
have we to do with thee, Jesus, Son of God?" 
this immortality claim of Spiritists does not 
convince minds well informed on the history of 
necromancy or evocation of the dead. If the 
immortality of the soul rested on no better au- 
thority than the statements of those whom St. 
Paul denounced as " lying spirits,' ' the belief 
in its reality would long ago have disappeared 
from the minds of all peoples. 

Strange, is it not, that thousands who pro- 



SPIRITISM 93 

fess to believe in the immortality of the soul, 
on the testimony of what they call "disem- 
bodied spirits,' ' refuse to accept the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ on the testimony of men 
who were eye-witnesses to the Crucifixion of 
the Son of God, who spoke with Him after He 
had risen from the tomb, and were so positive 
and convinced that it was the same Christ whom 
they saw hanging on the cross that they suf- 
fered martyrdom rather than deny His resur- 
rection. Faith in the divinity of our Lord 
and His doctrines is dead in the brain and 
hearts of men and women who abandon them- 
selves to "seeking the truth from the dead." 
They are the legitimate descendants of the 
apostates from the Church of Ephesus, of 
whom St. Paul said: "They have departed 
from the faith and are now giving heed to spirits 
of error and to doctrines of devils." 

Conceding the phenomena and spirit com- 
munications alleged by Spiritists in favor of 
their cult, there is absolutely no proof that the 
spirits which respond to the questions of the 
mediums or others, or who materialize and ap- 



94 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

pear at the seances, are the souls of deceased 
persons. Spiritism, then, contrary to the pre- 
tensions of its votaries, proves neither that the 
dead live again nor that the soul survives the 
body. It does not even prove that there is in 
man a soul distinct from the body. I call 
particular attention to this statement, which 
merits more consideration than it has hitherto 
received. 

We need no ghost from hell or elsewhere to 
convince us that the immortality of the soul fol- 
lows necessarily from the immateriality of the 
soul, for that is demonstrable from reason, and 
was so understood by nearly all heathen philos- 
ophers. What was not believed by the heathen, 
and is not provable from reason, is the Chris- 
tian doctrine of the resurrection of our bodies. 
This, the supernatural life, and the Incarnation, 
the spirits and the Spiritists do not teach and 
do not pretend to teach. We are on fairly inti- 
mate terms with Italian, French, and English 
literature dealing with the three broad divisions 
of Occultism and Spiritism, but we have no- 
where found in that literature a statement of 



SPIRITISM 95 

belief in the Incarnation of the Second Person 
of the Trinity, in the "resurrection of the 
body," or in the "life everlasting ' ' of the 
Apostles' Creed. 

A few years ago, James H. Hyslop, formerly 
a member of the faculty of Columbia University 
and, after his resignation, secretary of the 
American Society for Psychical Eesearch, gave 
the public his views on Occultism. Mr. Hyslop 
is a Spiritist, and the society of which he is the 
secretary, is experimenting with occult science 
and with the world beyond the grave. Lom- 
broso, Stead, Miles Grant, and an army of 
French, English, Italian, and German experi- 
menters have anticipated Mr. Hyslop by many 
years. He and his society can tell us nothing 
new, or advance any theory bearing upon the 
spirit world that was not known to Jews and 
Christians before the redemption of the Anglo- 
Saxons from barbarism. 

The substance of Mr. Hyslop 's statements, 
framed in secular English, is that : 

1. Heaven and Hell are only states of the 
mind. 



96 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

2. The members of the American Society of 
Psychical Research are Spiritists, not Spiritual- 
ists, who are fakers. 

3. Ghosts, in many instances, are simply 
phantoms or creatures of the imagination. 

4. Communications between disembodied 
souls and human beings of this earth are estab- 
lished facts, 

5. Spirits or disembodied souls have all the 
physical organs which were theirs when on 
earth, but these organs in the spirit sphere are 
now etherealized. 

Except the substitution of the correct word 
Spiritism for Spiritualism Mr. Hyslop's pres- 
entation of the Society's views suggests noth- 
ing new or indeed interesting. For the man 
who professes to believe in the Divinity of Jesus 
Christ, that is in the accepted Christian sense, 
which Spiritists do not, the position and line of 
action of such a man, face to face with the 
awful mystery of the unseen world, and with 
necromancy or evocation of the dead, is settled 
for all time. For those of us who are members 
of the Judaic or of the imperishable Catholic 



SPIRITISM 97 

Church, the grave question of Spiritism is for- 
ever answered and our attitude clear and in- 
telligible. The Judaic and Catholic Churches 
have officially and authoritatively declared that 
the belief in, and practice of, Spiritism, consult- 
ing spirits and entering into communication 
with them, evocation or calling up the dead — 
necromancy — are unlawful and against the com- 
mand of God. The Catholic and Judaic 
Churches condemn Spiritism and everything in- 
timately or remotely associated with it, and this 
condemnation is extended to planchette and 
ouija board. And these ever ancient and ever 
new churches know what they are doing, for 
they have in their keeping the knowledge and 
experience of the human race back to the days 
of Abraham. 

The Jew or Catholic who mixes himself up 
with Spiritism is a fool, and though he may not 
now admit his folly, he will do so before he is 
through with the spirits. We know of no more 
fruitful cause of insanity and immorality than 
necromancy and promiscuous intercourse with 
those whom St. John calls " spirits of devils.' ' 



98 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

Moses, by command of God, entreated the Is- 
raelites — the Jewish people — to abstain from 
all intercourse with spirits or fallen angels. 
Kead this extract from Deuteronomy, Chap. 
XVII : ' i Neither let there be found among you 
anyone that consulteth spirits, or that seeketh 
the truth from the dead." This warning was 
delivered about three thousand six hundred 
years ago to human beings like ourselves, who, 
"professing themselves to be wise, became 
fools." 

Once again let us consult the word of God: 
"And when Jesus was come to the other side 
of the water, into the country of the Gerasens, 
there met him two men possessed of devils, 
. . . and behold they cried out saying, 'What 
have we to do with thee, Jesus, Son of God ? ' 
(Matt. VIII). Who told the spirits who pos- 
sessed these men that Jesus was the Son of 
God, and why did they openly declare that they 
were not on His side? 

Notwithstanding the claims put forward by 
Spiritists that their cult has opened to the un- 
derstanding and knowledge of man a mine of 



SPIRITISM 



99 



information about himself, his latent and hith- 
erto undeveloped faculties, the state of disem- 
bodied souls and man's control over the dead, 
we are not persuaded that they have added any- 
thing to the sum of information already held by 
men familiar with the history of the human 
race. 

The apparition of spirits, clairvoyance or 
illumination of mental sight, mechanical phe- 
nomena such as the production of light, heat 
and sound, aerial transportation, oracleism or 
the disclosure of the future, table lifting, levita- 
tion, suspension of vital functions, acceleration 
of respiration and of the circulation of the 
blood, clairaudience, automatic writing, speaking 
unknown and foreign languages, forming human 
faces, human limbs, or entire bodies, alteration 
in weight of bodies, and all the other phenomena 
of modern Spiritism were known to the Chal- 
deans and Egyptians in the time of the 
Pharaos. 

Spirit manifestations and spirit wonders are 
not more frequent now than they have been in 
past ages. .They are not peculiar to our times. 



100 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



They were more common among the polished 
Greeks and all-conquering Komans than they 
are in any American and European nation to- 
day. Tertullian, Origen, and many of the ante- 
Nicene Fathers warned Christians not to be de- 
ceived by them. If we may credit the state- 
ments of Mr. J. P. Sinnet, the theosophist, in 
his "Occult World," the Thibetan mystics and 
Mahatmas of India claim to inherit from im- 
memorial times extraordinary psychic powers 
and an intimate acquaintance with transmun- 
dane spirits. The Catholic Church has in every 
age, since the Redemption, encountered them, 
and she has uniformly associated them with 
Satan and his angels. 

Spiritism is a heresy with which the members 
of Christianity have nothing in common. And 
yet men and women of high aim, sincere and 
honest, if not always of avowedly Christian be- 
lief, are every day enmeshed in the subtleties 
of this pernicious deception. For Catholics, 
and indeed for all Christians, the Catholic 
Church answers satisfactorily and conclusively 
every appeal of the soul over our present life 



SPIRITISM 101 

and our future destiny. Away from her side 
there is nothing positive, nothing dogmatic, 
nothing trustworthy in any of our notions as 
to whence we came or whither we go when the 
light of human existence dies out in us. Away 
from her there is darkness, confusion, and de- 
spair of the future. 



"It seems to me that the Apostle Paul, in the 
Epistle to the Ephesians, points to a race of spiritual 
creatures, similar to that I have described, but of a 
malignant type, when he speaks of beings not made 
of flesh and blood inhabiting the air around us 
and able injuriously to affect mankind. . . . These 
practices [of consulting spirits] were condemned in 
unmeasured terms by the Hebrew prophets. They 
were prohibited not only because they were the prac- 
tice of the pagan nations, but mainly because they 
tended to obscure the divine idea and to weaken the 
supreme faith in the reverent worship of the One 
Omnipotent Being." — Sir William Barrett, "Necro- 
mancy ard Modern Magic." 



VIII 

SPIRITISM— WHAT IS IT? 

Opinion of Sir William Barrett — Possibility of Spirit 
Communication — Sir Oliver Lodge — Swing of the Pendu- 
lum of the Mind — Spiritism in the Days of Moses — Iden- 
tically the Same To-day — Its Universality Among Pagan 
Nations — Sins of the Apostate Jews — The "Fallen An- 
gels" — Prayer of the Church — No Satan, no Christ — Past 
Conditions and Practices Reproduced in Modern Times- 
Warning — Vast Experience of the Church with Spirits. 

The Bev. Dr. Campbell, when recently ad- 
dressing a great congregation in the London 
Tabernacle, declared that he had read with deep 
interest Sir Oliver Lodge's "Conversations with 
his Dead Son," and that he was amazed and 
mystified. Why should he have been "amazed 
and mystified ' ' ? Did not Saul see and converse 
with the dead prophet Samuel, or with a spirit 
personifying him! Is not the Bible, from cover 
to cover, filled with examples of the living orally 
communing with the spirits of the dead or 

103 



104 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



spirits speaking for the dead? In fact, is not 
all literature, all history — sacred and profane — 
Plutarch, Homer, the Lives of the Saints, all ha- 
giology, punctuated with instances of the living 
communicating with the dead! 

The experience of Sir Oliver Lodge is noth- 
ing new. Holding converse with the dead is 
the daily experience of thousands living in Eu- 
rope, Asia, and America, and is a cult or prac- 
tice almost coeval with the human race. 

The idea of the possibility of spirit communi- 
cation is, of itself, in no way opposed to rea- 
sonable belief, but is a matter altogether de- 
pendent on the testimony of witnesses, whose 
evidence is legally entitled to belief. It has 
already been decided by rigid examination. 

Seventy years ago, when Darwin and Huxley 
thought they had pushed back the frontiers of 
the unknowable to the farthest point attain- 
able, that is to a negation of God, the still but 
impressive voice of the scientist, Alfred Rus- 
sel Wallace, was heard, crying in a wilderness 
of scoffs and jeers. To-day Sir Oliver Lodge 
has swung the pendulum back to where it was 



SPIRITISM 105 

two hundred years ago. And all the while the 
natural and the supernatural maintain their in- 
alterable laws, while only the minds of the sci- 
entists are vacillating. 

It is a melancholy reflection upon our proc- 
esses of thought that, after emerging from 
what scientists are pleased to call " supersti- 
tion,' ' and establishing elaborate cosmogonies 
and theories seemingly fixed and unalterable, 
the human mind should be driven back upon the 
old traditions and the old practices. 

Is it not deplorable that, when the intellect of 
man has lost the truths made known by God 
from the beginning, he is driven to take refuge 
in pure negation of all revelation or indulge 
himself with evocation of the dead, as Sir Oliver 
Lodge is now doing, or seek for information on 
the soul's destiny from those whom St. Mark 
calls " spirits of evil" and "unclean spirits" ? 

Spiritism, or the practice of necromancy, is 
to-day, as it was in the time of Moses, an evi- 
dence of moral decadence. As in the days of 
old, it has grown into a cult with which thou- 
sands are obsessed. It has a copious litera- 



106 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

ture punctuated by such startling terms as 
"telopsis," " telepathy, ' ' "teloteropathy," 
"zoo-magnetic force," * ' telekensis, ' ' and many 
other fine words invented by the Psychical Re- 
searchers. 

Spiritism is a development of paganism, an 
outgrowth of heathenism in every age of his- 
tory, and is found with pitiable forms of devil- 
worship among nations that are most deeply 
sunk in idolatry. Its permanency, then, among 
Japhetic races in modern times is an alarming 
mark of the degeneracy of our boasted civiliza- 
tion. 

Three thousand four hundred years ago the 
pagan world was so steeped in Spiritism that 
God, under pain of death, prohibited its prac- 
tice to the Israelites: "Neither let there be 
found among you any one that . . . consulteth 
spirits, or . . . that seeketh the truth from the 
dead." (Deut. XVIII, 11.) 

So that Spiritism, or communing with spirits 
and summoning the souls of the dead to hold 
converse with the living, goes back very far in 
the annals of the human race. It was prohibited 



SPIRITISM 107 

to the Jews by command of God in the time of 
Aaron. The prohibition was renewed by Saul, 
under pain of death, and before his time Moses, 
the "friend of God," publicly proclaimed that 
"the Lord abhorreth these things and those 
who do them. ' ' Necromancy and Spiritism in- 
voked the doom of the Gentile nations, who 
abandoned themselves to the worship of demons 
and to the frightful impurities and abominations 
which brought down upon them the anger of 
God and racial annihilation. 

The worship of Priapus, the divine rites paid 
to the Phallus in the days of Asa, the Judaean, 
by the apostate Jews, and mercilessly repro- 
bated by Ezekiel, the prophet of God, what 
were they but the deification of lust and the wor- 
ship of the devil, — the god of promiscuous sex- 
ual intercourse? 

There is not in all history, sacred and pro- 
fane, anything to be compared to the awful in- 
dictment framed by Ezekiel, in his sixteenth and 
seventeenth chapters, against the apostate Is- 
raelites who intermarried with the idolatrous 
Ammonites and Moabites, the "worshippers of 




108 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

devils who brought shameful abominations to 
their sons and daughters/ ' All through the 
Old and New Testaments there runs, as dis- 
tinctly visible as a black thread woven into 
white silk, the malign influence, not of disem- 
bodied souls, but of spirits lost in hopeless 
despair. There is no fact of history more 
strongly attested than this. 

Submitting our obedience to the records and 
revelations of divinely inspired writers and to 
the doctrinal teaching of the imperishable 
Church of God, we hold that the spirits that 
appear, or make their presence known, to the 
necromancers and accredited " mediums" of the 
cult of Spiritism, are demons or, according to 
St. Peter and St. Jude, "angels who kept not 
their principality, angels that sinned." We 
know that the souls of the dead do not return 
to amuse the living or to satisfy their curiosity, 
and we also know that pernicous intermeddling 
with the unseen world of evil spirits is, sooner 
or later, sure to end disastrously. 

The historic Catholic Church teaches now, 
and for two thousand years has uniformly 






SPIRITISM 



109 



taught, the existence of Satan, of lost spirits, 
their unquenchable hatred for the human race 
and their sinister influence upon persons who 
abandon themselves to intercourse with them. 
If there be no devil or evil spirits, what is the 
meaning of the exorcisms in Baptism, of the 
appeals to God in the Church's Missal, ritual, 
and public prayers, to save us from the evil in- 
fluence and enmity of Satan and the angels 
"who sinned"? To this end she commands her 
priests, after they have offered up the Sacrifice 
of the Mass, to say aloud this suggestive and 
doctrinal prayer : ' ' May God rebuke Satan, we 
humbly pray, and do thou, Michael, Prince of 
the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, drive 
back into hell all the evil spirits who wander 
through the world seeking the ruin of souls." 

If there be no Satan and no evil spirits there 
can be no Saviour, for, from whom does the 
Saviour save us? There can be no Redeemer, 
for, from what are we rescued, and if there be 
no Saviour and no Redeemer, can there be Chris- 
tianity? Now, why did Jesus Christ, the Son 
of God, our Redeemer and Saviour, become 



110 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

man? St. John removes all doubt from our 
minds when, in language emphatic and convinc- 
ing, he tells us in his first Epistle : l ' The Son 
of God appeared upon earth that he might de- 
stroy the works of the devil. ' ' 

All the ribald laughter of scoffers, all the 
ridicule of sceptics, all the sophisms of infidels, 
and the incredulity of those "wise in their own 
conceits," cannot alter facts. The existence of 
evil spirits and their malign influence over the 
souls of men and women are not alone facts of 
history, sacred and profane, they are facts in 
the life and experience of the human race. 

Clairvoyants and mediums represent as defin- 
ite a profession among us to-day as did python- 
esses, necromancers, and soothsayers among 
the Romans and earlier races. Seances and con- 
versations with spirits of the dead — in reality 
with powers of darkness — are entered upon 
without fear and spoken of without abhorrence. 

Nor do we believe with some learned theolo- 
gians that the unchangeable enmity of the devil 
and the malevolent operations of evil spirits 
on human souls are less now than before the 



SPIRITISM 111 

Redemption. The Christian, by prayer and 
sacramental grace, while not immune to attack, 
is stronger and better armed. That the mani- 
festations of the "powers of darkness" are less 
visibly pronounced than in former times is pat- 
ent to every student of diabolic agency, but 
that their hatred for man or their evil influ- 
ence upon those whose lives are corrupt, is 
weakened or weakening, we are not, from what 
we have seen and read, disposed to admit. 
The monstrous crimes which to-day disgrace 
our race, the appalling number of suicides, the 
unnatural lusts, the lawlessness, that is, the con- 
tempt for law, human and divine, and the atro- 
cious destruction of pre-natal, infant, and adult 
life, belong not to man as God made him. These 
inhuman and unnatural violations of the dignity 
of man — made just lower than the angels — must 
be charged to agencies outside of human ex- 
istence and with which our nature ought not to 
have anything in common. 

The Church of God warns her children to 
have nothing to do with mediums, seances, or 
with Spiritism in any form, which often lead to 



112 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

insanity and to utter moral depravity. She 
commands her adherents to have nothing to do 
with anything or any person mediately or im- 
mediately associated with diabolism and spirits 
of evil. She has behind her the experience 
of two thousand years and, when she speaks, 
she speaks with authority and with a knowledge 
that covers the religious and social history of 
the human race. 



1 ' I do not know of any belief that has so universally 
prevailed among members of the human race, at all 
times and in all lands, as the belief in the influence of 
demons and good angels on human beings, and an un- 
alterable faith in the appearance and visits of the souls 
of the dead to the living." — Gougenot Des Mous- 
seaux, "La Magie." 



IX 

APPARITIONS 

When a Soul Appears to the Living, Does it Appear in 
its Own Body? — Can it be Proved that the Dead Con- 
verse with the Living? — Case Recorded by Sir Robert 
Bruce — The Apparition — The Writing on the Slate — The 
Rescue — Verification — Reflections — Apparitions of the Liv- 
ing — Clairvoyance — Levitation — Angelic or. Demoniacal 
Spirits — Warning of an Apostle. 

No one may deny, for it is self-evident, that 
where the living body is, there also must be 
the soul. If with the Platonists we could believe 
in a triple soul, that is the rational, the appeti- 
tive, and the passionate soul, or with the Gre- 
cians in a pneuma or spirit and a psyche or 
soul, both dwelling in the same body, an appari- 
tion of the living would be a problem presenting 
no insuperable difficulties. 

When the soul leaves the home given to it by 
God, decomposition begins. But, in the case 
of the Captain's father, mentioned in a previous 

115 



116 FSSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

chapter, did the soul bring its body with it? 
No, certainly not, for when the English officer 
on board the homeward bound ship saw the ap- 
parition of the living man, the Captain's father, 
the sick man, was in his bed hundreds of miles 
away, and at no time was he left alone. 

"How then," you ask, "account for the 
* double' on board the ship?" 

Well, before we enter upon this problem, let 
us make reasonably sure that these apparitions 
occur; in fact, let us be convincingly sure, and 
then we can penetrate with a contented mind 
into the arcana — the secrets — of the very heart 
of these wonderful facts. 

Robert Bruce, originally descended from some 
branch of the Scottish family of that name, was 
born, in humble circumstances, about the close 
of the last century, at Torbay, in the south of 
England, and there bred up to a seafaring 
life. When about thirty years of age, in the 
year 1828, he was first mate on a bark trading 
between Liverpool and St. John's, New Bruns- 
wick. On one of her voyages bound westward, 
being then some five or six weeks out and having 




APPARITIONS 



117 



neared the eastern part of the Banks of New- 
foundland, the captain and mate had been on 
deck at noon, taking an observation of the sun ; 
after which they both returned to the cabin to 
compound reckonings. The cabin, a small one, 
was immediately at the stern of the vessel, and 
the short stairway descending to it ran athwart- 
ships. Immediately opposite to this stairway, 
just beyond a small square landing, was the 
mate 's state-room ; and from that landing there 
were two doors, close to each other, the one 
opening aft into the cabin, the other, fronting the 
stairway, into the state-room. The desk in the 
state-room was in the forward part of it, close 
to the door; so that any one sitting at it and 
looking over his shoulder could see into the 
cabin. 

The mate, absorbed in his calculation, which 
did not result as he expected, varying consid- 
erably from the dead-reckoning, had not noticed 
the captain's absence. When he had completed 
his calculations, he called out, without looking 
round, "I make our latitude and longitude so 
and so. Can that be right! How is yours ?" 



118 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

Keceiving no reply, he repeated his question, 
glancing over his shoulder and perceiving, as 
he thought, the captain busy writing on his 
slate. Still no answer. Thereupon he rose; 
and, as he fronted the cabin-door, the figure he 
had mistaken for the captain raised its head and 
disclosed to the astonished mate the features 
of an entire stranger. 

Bruce was no coward; but, as he met that 
fixed gaze looking directly at him in grave si- 
lence, and became assured that it was no one 
whom he had ever seen before, it was too much 
for him ; and, instead of stopping to question the 
seeming intruder, he rushed upon deck in such 
evident alarm that it instantly attracted the 
captain's attention. "Why, Mr. Bruce," said 
the latter, "what in the world is the matter with 
you?" 

"The matter, Sir? Who is that man at your 
desk!" 

"No one that I know of." 

"But there is, Sir: there's a stranger there." 

' ' A stranger ! Why, man, you must be dream- 
ing. You must have seen the steward there, or 



APPARITIONS 119 

the second mate. Who else would venture 
down without orders ?" 

"But, Sir, he was sitting in your arm-chair, 
fronting the door, writing on your slate. Then 
he looked up full in my face ; and, if ever I saw 
a man plainly and distinctly in this world, I saw 
him. ' ' 

"Him! Whom?" 

"God knows, Sir: I don't. I saw a man, and 
a man I had never seen in my life before." 

"You must be going crazy, Mr. Bruce. A 
stranger, and we nearly six weeks out!" 

"I know, Sir; but then I saw him." 

"Go down and see who it is." 

Bruce hesitated. "I never was a believer in 
ghosts," he said, "but, if the truth must be told, 
Sir, I'd rather not face it alone." 

"Come, come, man. Go down at once, and 
don't make a fool of yourself before the crew." 

"I hope you've always found me willing to do 
what's reasonable," Bruce replied, changing 
color, "but if it's all the same to you, Sir, I'd 
rather we should both go down together." 

The captain descended the stairs, and the mate 



120 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



followed him. Nobody in the cabin! They 
examined the state-rooms. Not a soul to be 
found ! 

' ' Well, Mr. Bruce/ ' said the captain, "did 
not I tell you you had been dreaming?' ' 

"It's all very well to say so, Sir; but if I 
didn't see that man writing on your slate, may 
I never see my home and family again!" 

i ' Ah ! writing on the slate ! Then it should be 
there still." And the captain took it up. 

"By God," he exclaimed, "here's something, 
sure enough! Is that your writing, Mr. 
Bruce?" 

The mate took the slate ; and there, in plain, 
legible characters, stood the words, " Steer to 
the nor Vest." 

"Have you been trifling with me, Sir?" 
added the captain, in a stern manner. 

"On my word as a man and as a sailor, Sir," 
replied Bruce, "I know no more of this matter 
than you do. I have told you the exact truth. ' ' 

The captain sat down at his desk, the slate 
before him, in deep thought. At last, turning 
the slate over and pushing it toward Bruce, he 



APPARITIONS 121 

said, " Write down, ' Steer to the nor 'west.' " 

The mate complied; and the captain, after 
narrowly comparing the two handwritings, said, 
"Mr. Bruce, go and tell the second mate to come 
down here." 

He came ; and, at the captain 's request, he also 
wrote the same words. So did the steward. 
So, in succession, did every man of the crew who 
could write at all. But not one of the various 
hands resembled, in any degree, the mysterious 
writing. 

When the crew retired, the captain sat in 
deep thought. "Could any one have been 
stowed away 1 ' ' at last he said. ' ' The ship must 
be searched; and if I don't find the fellow, he 
must be a good hand at hide-and-seek. Order 
up all hands. ' ' 

Every nook and corner of the vessel, from 
stem to stern, was thoroughly searched, and 
that with all the eagerness of excited curiosity, 
— for the report had gone out that a stranger 
had shown himself on board; but not a living 
soul beyond the crew and the officers was found. 

Returning to the cabin after their fruitless 



122 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

search, "Mr. Bruce," said the captain, "what 
the devil do you make of all this ? ' ' 

"Can't tell, Sir. I saw the man write; you 
see the writing. There must be something in 
it." 

"Well, it would seem so. We have the wind 
free, and I have a great mind to keep her away 
and see what will come of it." 

"I surely would, Sir, if I were in your place. 
It's only a few hours lost, at the worst." 

"Well, we'll see. Go on deck and give the 
course nor 'west. And, Mr. Bruce," he added, 
as the mate rose to go, "have a look-out aloft, 
and let it be a hand you can depend on. ' ' 

His orders were obeyed. About three o 'clock 
the look-out reported an iceberg nearly ahead, 
and, shortly after, what he thought was a vessel 
of some kind close to it. 

As they approached, the captain's glass dis- 
closed the fact that it was a dismantled ship, 
apparently frozen to the ice, and with a good 
many human beings on it. Shortly after, they 
hove to, and sent out the boats to the relief of 
the sufferers. 



APPARITIONS 123 

It proved to be a vessel from Quebec, bound 
to Liverpool, with passengers on board. She 
had got entangled in the ice, and finally frozen 
fast, and had passed several weeks in a most 
critical situation. She was stove badly, her 
decks swept, — in fact, a mere wreck ; all her.pro- 
visions and almost all her water gone. Her 
crew and passengers had lost all hope of being 
saved, and their gratitude for the unexpected 
rescue was proportionately great. 

As one of the men who had been brought away 
in the third boat that had reached the wreck was 
ascending the ship's side, the mate, catching a 
glimpse of his face, started back in consterna- 
tion. It was the very face he had seen, three or 
four hours before, looking up at him from the 
captain's desk. 

At first he tried to persuade himself it might 
be but a fancy; but the more he examined the 
man the more sure he became that he was right. 
Not only the face, but the person and the dress, 
exactly corresponded. 

As soon as the exhausted crew and famished 
passengers were cared for, and the bark was on 



124 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

her course again, the mate called the captain 
aside. "It seems that was not a ghost I saw 
to-day, Sir: the man's alive." 

' < What do yon mean ? Who 's alive ! ' ■ 

"Why, Sir, one of the passengers we have just 
saved is the same man I saw writing on your 
slate at noon. I would swear to it in a court 
of justice.' ' 

"Upon my word, Mr. Bruce," replied the 
captain, "this gets more and more singular. 
Let us go and see this man." 

They found him in conversation with the cap- 
tain of the rescued ship. They both came for- 
ward, and expressed, in the warmest terms, 
their gratitude for deliverance from a horrible 
fate, — slow-coming death by exposure and 
starvation. 

The captain replied that he had but done what 
he was certain they would have done for him 
under the same circumstances, and asked them 
both to step down into the cabin. Then, turn- 
ing to the passenger, he said, "I hope, Sir, you 
will not think I am trifling with you ; but I would 
be much obliged to you if you would write a 




APPARITIONS 



125 



few words on this slate." And he handed him 
the slate, with that side up on which the mysteri- 
ous writing, was not. "I will do anything you 
ask," replied the passenger; "but what shall I 
write?" 

"A few words are all I want. Suppose you 
write, ' Steer to the nor Vest.' " 

The passenger, evidently puzzled to make out 
the motive for such a request, complied, how- 
ever, with a smile. The captain took up the 
slate and examined it closely; then, stepping 
aside so as to conceal the slate from the pas- 
senger, he turned it over, and gave it to him 
again with the other side up. 

"You say that is your handwriting?" said 
he. 

"I need not say so," rejoined the other, look- 
ing at it, ' i for you saw me write it. ' ' 

"And this?" said the captain, turning the 
slate over. 

The man looked first at one writing, then at 
the other, quite confounded. At last, "What 
is the meaning of this ? ' ' said he. "I only wrote 
one of these. Who wrote the other?" 



126 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

"That's more than I can tell you, Sir. My 
mate here says you wrote it, sitting at this desk, 
at noon to-day.' ' 

The captain of the wreck and the passenger 
looked at each other, exchanging glances of in- 
telligence and surprise; and the former asked 
the latter, "Did you dream that you wrote on 
this slate?" 

"No, sir, not that I remember.' ' 

"You speak of dreaming," said the captain of 
the bark. "What was this gentleman about 
at noon to-day?" 

"Captain," rejoined the other, "the whole 
thing is most mysterious and extraordinary; 
and I had intended to speak to you about it as 
soon as we got a little quiet. This gentleman 
(pointing to the passenger), being much ex- 
hausted, fell into a heavy sleep, or what seemed 
such, some time before noon. After an hour or 
more, he awoke, and said to me, * Captain, we 
shall be relieved this very day.' When I asked 
him what reason he had for saying so, he replied 
that he had dreamed that he was on board a 
bark, and that she was coming to our rescue. 



APPARITIONS 127 

He described her appearance and rig; and, to 
our utter astonishment, when your vessel hove in 
sight she corresponded exactly to his descrip- 
tion of her. We had not put much faith in what 
he said ; yet still we hoped there might be some- 
thing in it, for drowning men, you know, will 
catch at straws. As it has turned out, I cannot 
but think that it was all arranged, in some in- 
comprehensible way, by an overruling Provi- 
dence, so that we might be saved. To Him be 
all thanks for His goodness to us." 

" There is not a doubt," rejoined the other 
captain, "that the writing on the slate, let it have 
come from whom it may, saved all your lives. I 
was steering at the time considerably south of 
west, and I altered my course to nor 'west, and 
had a look-out aloft, to see what would come of 
it. But you say," he added, turning to the 
passenger, ' ' that you did not dream of writing 
on a slate?" 

"No, sir. I have no recollection whatever of 
doing so. I got the impression that the bark I 
saw in my dream was coming to rescue us ; but 
how that impression came I cannot tell. There 



128 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

is another very strange thing about it," he 
added. "Everything here on board seems to 
me quite familiar; yet I am very sure I never 
was in your vessel before. It is all a puzzle to 
me. What did your mate see?" 

Thereupon Mr. Bruce related to them all the 
circumstances above detailed. The conclusion 
they finally arrived at was, that it was a special 
interposition of Providence to save them from 
what seemed a hopeless fate. 

The above narrative was communicated to me 
by Capt. J. S. Clarke, of the schooner Julia Hal- 
lock, who had it directly from Mr. Bruce himself. 
They sailed together for seventeen months, in 
the years 1836 and '37 ; so that Captain Clarke 
had the story from the mate about eight years 
after the occurrence. He has since lost sight of 
him, and does not know whether he is yet alive. 
All he has heard of him since they were ship- 
mates is, that he continued to trade to New 
Brunswick, that he became the master of the 
brig Comet, and that she was lost. 

I asked Captain Clarke if he knew Bruce well, 
and what sort of man he was. 






APPARITIONS 129 

"As truthful and straightforward aman," 
he replied, "as ever I met in all my life. We 
were as intimate as brothers ; and two men can 't 
be together, shut up for seventeen months in 
the same ship, without getting to know whether 
they can trust one another's word or not. He 
always spoke of the circumstance in terms of 
reverence, as of an incident that seemed to bring 
him nearer to God and to another world. I'd 
stake my life upon it that he told me no lie. y ' 

This singular example of the apparition of a 
living man is copied from the ' ' Memoirs of Sir 
Robert Bruce,' 9 by Robert Dale Owens in his 
book, "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another 
World." It was critically examined by M. 
Pierart in "La Revue Spirite," by Gougenot 
Des Mousseaux in his * * La Magie, ' ' and by many 
other eminent searchers into the secrets of pneu- 
matology, and accepted by them as a possibility. 

The reader will, of course, understand that, 
for the sake of brevity, I omit many interesting 
details in the examples of bilocation I am now 
citing. We do not yet know the properties of 



130 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



matter. Perhaps, if we knew them, we should 
discover secrets by which we should be able to 
explain the phenomenon of bilocation. But, ad- 
mitting the experience of Bruce to be a fact, 
we are confronted with a few questions meriting 
serious attention. We have already been told 
by St. Thomas, whose prodigious intellect ap- 
proached, in its power of analysis, angelic 
subtlety, that: "The soul cannot leave its 
body either in natural ecstasy or in divine ec- 
stasy, unless it be certain that by divine per- 
mission and by the will of God the soul leaves 
the body again to return to it. ' ' 

The body from which the soul has departed 
is dead. Can the soul come back again to re- 
animate it? Of itself it has no power to do so. 
Such a phenomenon or miracle, if it occurred, 
would be at once a resurrection. To leave the 
body and enter it again, as one goes out of a 
house and comes back, would be a miracle like 
unto that which our Divine Lord in His omnipo- 
tence wrought on that ever memorable and por- 
tentous occasion when He came out victorious 
from the tomb. 



APPARITIONS 



131 



Can the soul in answering the impulses of its 
proper faculties, or by any power inherent in 
it, see into the future and act at great distances? 
It cannot. Can the fluid substances of the body 
elongate themselves, as it were, and carry some 
of the faculties of the soul with them? No. 
Can the soul extend itself like a ribbon of rub- 
ber and recoil to its first place 1 It cannot. 

How, then, explain apparitions of living men, 
clairvoyance, levitation, or the lifting of great 
weights by invisible hands, bilocation, aerial 
transportation and similar prodigies, proved 
beyond the possibility of doubt? I answer that 
all these objective and psychic phenomena are 
produced by ultra-mundane agencies. St. John, 
the divine, refers to these unseen forces when 
he warns us "not to believe every spirit, but 
try the spirits whether they be of God." Of 
course, we all know that there are good and 
evil spirits, but what their powers and limita- 
tions are is known only to God. St. Paul re- 
minded the Ephesians that they had to contend 
not only against the acts and tongues of repro- 
bate men, but also against the "rulers of the 



132 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



world of darkness, against the spirits of wicked- 
ness in high places/ ' that is to say, " spirits in 
the air." The inspired Psalmist also tells us 
that God visited the Egyptians with His wrath 
and indignation, " which He sent by evil 
angels. ' ' 



"As to being different from ourselves — what their 
nature may be, of this we cannot form any idea. 
Souls of the dead? This is far from being demon- 
strated. The innumerable observations which I have 
collected during more than forty years, all prove to 
me the contrary. No satisfactory identification has 
been made." — Camille Flammarion, "La Kevue des 
Deux Mondes." 



DEMONIACAL POSSESSION 

Sir Oliver Lodge — His Plaint — The Judaic and Catholic 
Churches — Their Doctrines on Spirits — On Demonology — 
Practice and Universality of Necromancy in Mosaic Times 
—Their Evocators or Mediums — Condemnation of Me- 
diums by Moses — Possession in the Time of Our Saviour 
— His Command and Power over Demons — Apostolic and 
Early Christian Times — Means of Detecting Spirit Pres- 
ence — Prayer of the Christian Church — "Mountain 
Meadows Massacre" —John D. Lee — His Extraordinary 
Statement. 

Sir Oliver Lodge, who, in his book, "Ray- 
mond," records some singular psychic phe- 
nomena, wishes to know why the Church does 
not take a deeper interest in what he terms 
ultra-mundane life. In an article published 
lately in The Nineteenth Century, he contends 
that Dogma should be generous enough to ex- 
amine the facts confirming inter-communication 
between the living and the dead or between souls 
of this world and spirits of the world beyond 

135 



136 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

the grave. As Sir Oliver does not inform us 
what he means by "church" or "dogma," we 
are free to put our own interpretation on the 
terms. But if he includes in his appeal the 
Judaic and Catholic Churches, then the eminent 
scientist is not as familiar with the Scriptures, 
the Talmud and the literature of the Catholic 
Church and her provincial and synodical decrees 
as we should expect from one of his enviable rep- 
utation. There is hardly one of the great doc- 
tors of the Church, or one of the ante-Nicene Fa- 
thers, not a single theologian of repute, from St. 
Augustine to Bellarmine and Suarez, that has 
not dealt, and dealt exhaustively, with inter- 
communication between this world and the spirit 
world. And they all, without an exception, as- 
sure us that the spirits who answer the call of 
mediums, evocators, and necromancers are not 
souls of the dead, but demons or "angels that 
sinned and forsook their own habitation." 

The very great number of mediums or py- 
thonesses among the Gentile nations, and among 
some of the Hebrew tribes, in the time of Moses, 
and the universality and frequency of this prac- 



DEMONIACAL POSSESSION 



137 



tice of consulting the spirits believed to be the 
souls of the dead, led the great lawgiver to pro- 
hibit, by order of God, the presence of mediums 
among the " chosen people.' ' Here is what we 
read in Deuteronomy, Chap. XVIII: "Neither 
let there be found among you any one that . . . 
consulteth soothsayers ... or pythonic spirits, 
or fortune tellers, or that seeketh the truth from 
the dead. For the Lord abhorreth all these 
things, and for these abominations he will de- 
stroy them." 

In obedience to the advice of Samuel, the 
prophet, Saul, King of Israel, renewed the 
prohibition of Moses and "drove out of the land 
all necromancers and sorcerers.' 9 

And what inference are we to draw from 
the many examples of demoniacal possession 
and the evil influence of lost spirits upon man 
recorded in the New Testament? Listen to 
this : "And when Jesus was come on the other 
side of the water, into the country of the Ger- 
asens, there met him two that were possessed 
with devils. . . . And behold they cried out, say- 
ing: What have we to do with thee, Jesus, 




138 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

son of God? Art thou come hither to torment 
us before the time?" 

Does not the appeal of these unhappy spirits, 
lost in endless woe, to our Saviour not to send 
them into the abyss, but to permit them to enter 
the herd of swine, hint that these evil spirits 
found some relief of pain in being permitted to 
remain on earth? The fear of torment before 
the time intimates that the time of their extreme 
punishment was not yet come (Luke VIII, 31). 

If you say our credulity has been imposed 
upon by what is termed fictitious possessions 
produced by diseases of the mind, by hallucina- 
tions, by the distempered imagination of those 
who thought themselves possessed, or that 
feigned to be so for a purpose; and that there 
never was and is not now any case of demoniac 
possession, we reply that if there was and is 
no real possession, Christ and His Apostles 
and the Christian Church are in error and must 
wilfully involve all true believers in error, by 
speaking, acting, and praying as if these cases 
were a reality and not a figment of our imagina- 
tion. Our Saviour spoke to and commanded 




DEMONIACAL POSSESSION 139 

these demoniac spirits who dwelt in human be- 
ings, and the spirits answered and obeyed, and 
gave proofs of their presence by tormenting the 
wretched men or women they were forced to 
depart from. They cast these men into violent 
convulsions, threw them on the ground, left 
them for dead, entered into hogs and rushed 
these animals into the sea. Was all this a de- 
lusion ? 

Our Divine Lord tells the Jews, in proof of 
His mission, that devils are cast out by Him, 
and promised the Apostles the same power that 
He Himself possessed over these fallen spirits. 
Can all this be nothing but a figure of speech? 

Let it be conceded that there are counterfeit 
demoniacs who use the actions, words, motions, 
contortions, cries, howlings and convulsions of 
one possessed, and that some acts which seem 
to be supernatural, may be produced by an 
overheated imagination, by sleight-of-hand, by 
contrivance and trick, — still there are insur- 
mountable difficulties in the way. If a person, 
all at once, speaks and understands languages he 
never learned, talks informationally on pro- 



140 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



found and sublime subjects he never studied 
and of which an hour before he was densely 
ignorant, or discovers the unspoken and secret 
thoughts of another ; if he is lifted into the air 
without visible assistance, and all this be done 
without any personal motive, interest or pas- 
sion, what conclusion must we come to? 

If it be said that speaking foreign languages 
by one who can only express himself normally 
in his mother tongue, or that floating in the air 
by a man without visible help, are an impossi- 
bility, then those hierophants of Spiritism — 
Weir, Home, Reggazoni, Dupotet, Owens, and 
others are deceiving us. But supposing them 
to be parties to a conspiracy of lies, what are 
we to say of the Bible, of the Jewish Talmud, 
the Hebrew Mishna and Gem or a, all of which 
emphatically tell us of demoniac possession, of 
the speaking of foreign tongues and of levi- 
tation? And how can we explain away the 
statements of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Bos- 
suet, de Merville, and above all and over all the 
prayer of the historic Catholic Church in her 
Exorcism of the Possessed? 



DEMONIACAL POSSESSION 141 

It may be asked, "How can God, our Creator, 
allow these 'sons of malediction ' to possess 
our souls or obsess our bodies V 9 We reply, 
"Does not God permit the lustful man to ruin 
the innocent girl?" An evil spirit out of the 
human body, and an evil soul within it, can in- 
jure only those who consort with them and sur- 
render their will to their baneful influence. 
God, through His own mysterious ways, gov- 
erns the universe and all who dwell within it 
till the Judgment of the Great Day, when 
justice shall be meted to all with rigorous im- 
partiality. On that day unrepenting evil men 
and unrepenting rebellious angels will alike hear 
and suffer the "Depart, ye cursed, into ever- 
lasting fire which was prepared for the devil 
and his angels' ' (Matt. XXV, 41). 

The Sacred Scriptures, the Catholic Church, 
her theologians, her great doctors and her early 
Fathers, all teach that rebel angels, — called, to- 
day, spirits by the Spiritists, — are unclean, pro- 
moters of spiritual darkness and spiritual wick- 
edness. They are called "angels of darkness" 
by St. Paul, who also says that they sometimes 



142 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

transform themselves into angels of light, in 
order that they may the more easily seduce men, 
and that they suffer grief, despair and rage in 
their state of irrevocable damnation. 

Among early Christian writers there per- 
haps was none who had a more intimate ac- 
quaintance with the spiritual phenomena of his 
age (second century), than Tertullian. In his 
1 < Apologeticum ' ' ( Chap. XXII ) he says : "The 
subtility of the substance of these spirits gives 
to them a marvelous aptitude for penetrating 
the double substance of man. The body and the 
soul can be tainted and vitiated by their sinister 
influence and their impure contact. And when 
these necromancers (mediums) evoke the dead, 
and spirits answer, it is by the aid and help of 
demons. " 

Down the avenue of time all history is punctu- 
ated with multitudinous and pitiable examples 
of demoniac possession. And so well authen- 
ticated and thoroughly verified are these cases 
of human possession that we cannot refuse to 
accept them as facts without using methods of 



DEMONIACAL POSSESSION 143 

criticism which would destroy the credibility of 
all history. 

And not only have individuals fallen under 
the baneful influence of these malign creatures, 
but masses of human beings have been driven 
by them to the perpetration of atrocious acts 
of brutality and cruelty outside the nature of 
man. That profound reasoner, Orestes A. 
Brownson, rose from the study of the phe- 
nomena of the French Revolution, convinced 
that masses of the people were demonized. He 
states that many of those who participated in 
atrocious deeds of inhumanity afterwards 
acknowledged that they could not help doing 
what they did, that another will than their own 
controlled them, whirling them and tossing 
them, as a wind the leaves, and forcing them 
to obey. 

You have perhaps heard of the " Mountain 
Meadows Massacre," when, on the 20th of Sep- 
tember, 1857, one hundred and thirty emigrants 
— men, women, and children — on their way 
through Utah to the Pacific Coast, were ruth- 



144 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

lessly slaughtered. A man named John D. Lee 
was the leader of the murderers. That we may 
realize the value of his statement when about 
to be executed, twenty years after the whole- 
sale murder, I insert this extract taken from a 
sketch of his life by Mr. Josiah F. Gibbs, au- 
thor of "Lights and Shadows of Mormonism": 

"In stature John D. Lee was about five feet 
eight inches, of powerful build, tireless energy 
and unchallenged courage. He was also a man 
of more than average intelligence, of deep re- 
ligious convictions, love for his family and 
friends, and loyal to his duty as he saw it." 

On the morning of the 23rd of March, 1876, 
Lee, after his trial and conviction, was executed 
for his part in the awful slaughter. Standing 
near his coffin he made a brief farewell address, 
in which he denied any intent to do wrong: 
"There are," he said, "thousands of people in 
this church (Mormon) that are honorable and 
good-hearted friends. But there is a kind of 
living, magnetic influence that has come over 
us, and I cannot compare it to anything than 
the reptile that enamors his prey, till it cap- 



DEMONIACAL POSSESSION 145 

tivates it, paralyzes it, and rushes it into the 
jaws of death. I cannot compare this influence 
to anything else. It is so, I am satisfied of it. 
/ know it." 

And read this from the N. Y. Times, Feb. 14th, 
1918: 

"The National Association for the Advance- 
ment of Colored People sent this telegram last 
night to President Wilson: ' Speaking on be- 
half of millions of Americans, we respectfully 
call your attention to the horrible crime at Es- 
till Springs, Tenn., where a fellow-American, 
accused of murder, was first tortured by hot 
irons and then slowly burned to death by a mob, 
the second burning recently of this kind.' " 

Is it possible to believe that man, made in 
the image and likeness of God, civilized man, 
church-going man, could of his own volition 
be so atrociously cruel? If it be, where, then, 
is the difference between these men and the 
demons of hell? The Times, moreover, did not 
tell all, for present by invitation at this unbe- 
lievable act of savagery, were women, young 
maidens and little children. Are we not con- 



146 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



strained to admit with the illustrious M. Ratis- 
bonne that: " There are many evil men and 
women in our midst who are possessed with evil 
spirits and, like the Magdalene, are not con- 
scious of it." 



"If the disembodied soul cannot in any way move 
the elements of matter, what are we to say respecting 
the phenomenon taking place at spiristic seances f 
Can that transfer of objects from one place to an- 
other, those mysterious noises emanating from chairs 
and tables and musical instruments, that spontaneous 
opening of doors and windows and the many other oft- 
reported and now so well-attested phenomena be at- 
tributed to the agency of departed souls? We reply 
that this is wholly impossible, since such effects are 
altogether beyond the natural powers of the separated 
soul, although they are, of course, possible to angelic 
beings." — Lepicier, "The Unseen World." 



XI 

WHAT OF THE DEAD? 

Evocation of the Dead — Was probably practised before 
the Deluge — Statement of M. de Mirville — Evocation ap- 
peals to the Curiosity of People — Preparing for Initiation 
into Spiritism — Planchette and Ouija Board — The Trance- 
Medium — Sincerity of Spiritists — Souls of the Dead do not 
come back to Earth — Evocation condemned by Moses and 
by Saul — Wonderful Examples. 

The practice of "calling up the dead" and 
conversing with them, which is opposed to the 
teaching of the Catholic Church and to the in- 
stinct and reason of man, obtained probably in 
ante-diluvian times. We know from the pages 
of Holy Writ that in the days of the patriarchs 
and prophets the custom was universal and 
tended largely to a physical and moral de- 
generacy which belongs, even to-day, to all ori- 
ental races. 

We do not altogether agree with M. de Mir- 
ville in his statement that: "Among the civil- 

149 



150 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

ized races of Europe and America the cult of 
Evocation or Spiritism is confined to persons 
of weak mentality and of a low order of intelli- 
gence. ' ' We are of the opinion that among the 
believers in the cult are many men and women 
of good and trained intellects who believe what 
they believe because they have not studied Spir- 
itism and its development from the pages of 
the Sacred Scriptures, from the writings of the 
early Christian Fathers, theologians, and doc- 
tors of the Church, from the decrees of provin- 
cial councils and from the briefs, or prohibitions 
of many Popes, notably Benedict XIV and Leo 
XI. 

The methods of the Spiritism of to-day ap- 
peal urgently to innate curiosity and to an in- 
satiable craving in many persons for the new 
and the untried. 

In nearly all initial experiments the novice 
experiences sensations like unto those which 
the hypnotised feels when surrendering his will 
to the hypnotiser. After additional experi- 
ences, his curiosity, the books he reads, or the 
promptings of a Spiritist acquaintance induce 



WHAT OF THE DEAD? 



151 



him to attend "sittings" where experiments are 
conducted with planchette or the ouija board. 
After this, he frequents seances, is placed en 
rapport (in communication) with the dead — 
with spirits — who make their presence known 
by rappings, by slate-writing, whisperings in 
his ear, by personal contact or by divers other 
acts. After these experiences he falls under 
the influence of the trance-medium and comes 
into intimate and familiar association with ma- 
lign spirits masquerading as the souls of men 
or women who at one time lived upon our earth. 
Henceforth, and in every instance, the answers 
he receives to his questions purport to come 
from dead human beings. These communica- 
tions have a particular charm for him, he feels 
honored by the confidence the dead repose in 
him and elated with the privilege by which he is 
permitted to converse with them. From now on 
he is a confirmed Spiritist, prepared to defend 
his cult and, if necessary, like Robert Dale 
Owen, to die for it. 

Now does he actually enter into communion 
with the souls of the dead, or is he, as were 



152 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



those living in Apostolic times, "giving heed to 
seducing spirits and doctrines of devils"! (1 
Timothy IV, 1.) 

Is it permitted for man by sacrilegious in- 
cantations, from curiosity, whim or caprice or 
for any motive to disturb the repose of the 
tomb? 

The souls of the dead — saved or lost — do not 
respond to the evocations of man. This is the 
teaching of the Old and New Testaments, of 
the Catholic Church, and of the Fathers and 
Doctors of the Church. ' ' The souls of the just 
are in the hands of God and the torment of 
death shall not touch them." (Wisdom III, 1.) 

When we read in Deut. (XVIII, 11) : "Neither 
let there be found among you any one that . . . 
consulteth pythonic spirits, or . . . seeketh the 
truth from the dead," — are we to believe that 
the souls of the dead, like obedient servants, 
will come at the sound of our voice and give 
answer to our questions? Certainly not. The 
language of the Sacred Text simply conforms to 
the prevailing belief of the time. When we 
read in Genesis: "Eemember, man, thou art 



WHAT <JF THE DEAD? 153 

but dust, and into dust thou shalt return," we 
know that the prophecy refers only to the body 
of man. The same form of expression obtains 
when the evil spirits adored by the heathen are 
called gods, in the verse, ''the gods of the Gen- 
tiles are demons. ,, 

It is not in the power of man, certainly not 
in that of a medium, to summon the dead, 
trouble their repose, or disturb their hallowed 
rest. But under very exceptional circum- 
stances, or for a very special reason, does God 
ever permit a departed soul to return to earth 
by request of the living! It may happen, for 
confronted with the narrative in the first Book 
of Kings recording the appearance of the dead 
prophet, Samuel, we cannot deny the possibility 
of human apparitions. Our difficulty consists 
in determining whether these apparitions are 
the absolute personalities themselves or good or 
bad angels representing them. If the souls of 
the just ever return to this earth, it can only 
happen by an act of their own pure wills, and 
by divine permission. The eternally lost soul 
cannot come back to earth. The patriarch Job 



154 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

informs us that: ^As a cloud is dissipated 
and passeth away ; so he that has gone down to 
hell shall not come up. Nor shall he return any 
more into his house, neither shall his place know 
him again' ' (Job VII, 9 sq.). 

If Dives, the selfish and proud rich man who 
"was buried in hell," could return to earth, he 
would not have begged of Abraham to send some 
one to his five brothers on earth to warn them 
to lead better lives, "lest they also come into 
this place of torment s" (Luke XVI, 28). 

That the dead do not return to earth, except 
by the permission of God and for a special rea- 
son, is a truth of Scripture and of Catholic 
theology. 

Neither does Holy Writ, or theology, — which 
is the science that treats of divine things and of 
the relations of man with God, and is inti- 
mately acquainted with and contrasts and com- 
pares the texts and verses of the Sacred Books, 
— raise an eternal and unscalable rampart be- 
tween our eyes and the vision of departed souls. 

Theologians are of the opinion that there 
have been occasions and times when redeemed 



WHAT OF THE DEAD? 



155 



souls were permitted to return to the earth, 
and appear to one or many persons, and deliver 
a message or a warning. In corroboration of 
this here is what the Oxford scholar, Thomas 
W. Allies, relates in his "Journal" of a tour 
through Europe in the years 1845-48. The 
learned Abbe Theodore Ratisbonne, who saw 
and spoke to the apparition, was one of the most 
distinguished and upright men of his day. 

"At four we went to a Benediction at Abbe 
Ratisbonne 's house. We then adjourned to 

the parlor, with M. Ratisbonne, Lady , 

and Mr. , a Scotch minister. Here we con- 
versed about various matters. . . . They 
asked me about my visit to the Tyrolese stig- 

matisees. Lady told of the apparition, 

soon after his death — of a gentleman to Lord 

in fulfilment of a promise he had, six 

months before, made to him. M. Ratisbonne re- 
marked that appearances of this kind often hap- 
pened, adding: 'I believe it from what occurred 
to myself.' ' Occurred to you !' I said. ' What do 
you mean V i I had been called in, ' he answered, 
4 once at Strasburg, to administer extreme unc- 



156 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



tion to a young married lady. I found her in 
the agony of death, screaming fearfully; her 
husband was supporting her in his arms on 
the bed. I administered the last unction to her ; 
and an effect followed which I have often ob- 
served: she became calm, and died in the ut- 
most peace. Some days afterwards I was in 
my room about noon, looking out on the garden. 
Suddenly I saw her within two steps of me, the 
same exactly as when living, but with a great 
brightness all around her. She made a motion 
to me of inexpressible sweetness and happiness, 
as if thanking me for a great service, and dis- 
appeared. At the first moment I felt a thrill 
like an electric shock; but this passed. I men- 
tioned this vision afterwards to a friend, and 
to her husband. I had known but little of her. ' 
— I asked if he was quite sure this was not an 
illusion, but he had no doubt about it. Of the 
many stories of this kind one has heard this is 
the first told me by the person to whom it hap- 
pened.'' 

It seems to be, however, the prevailing 
opinion among theologians that a disembodied, 



WHAT OF THE DEAD? 



157 



or, more correctly, a separated soul, whether 
lost or saved, never appears in person. They 
do not deny that God may confer on disem- 
bodied souls a power possessed by good and bad 
angels over matter, but contend that this power 
would mean an intrinsic change in the proper- 
ties and nature of the soul. But if this opinion 
be accepted as a judgment and a finality, how 
are we to explain the presence of Moses and 
Elias at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor? 
For in the seventeenth chapter of St. Matthew 
it is mentioned without any equivocation that 
Moses and Elias were actually present. More- 
over, the apparition of Lourdes would not be 
that of the Blessed Virgin, but, possibly, of an 
angel representing her. The great St. Au- 
gustine hesitated to commit himself to a positive 
answer to the question of the possibility of de- 
parted souls returning to earth. He writes: 
"Some of the dead can be transported among 
the living; not that the act is accomplished by 
virtue of their own nature, for it can only occur 
by consent and effect of divine power; but, 
when these things happen, is the presence of 



158 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

the dead positive and real, or is it that they 
are represented by a spirit, clothed in their 
garb and resembling them? This is what I can- 
not determine." {Be Cura pro Mortuis, Chap. 
XV). More than once since the death, A. D. 
430, of the illustrious Bishop of Hippo has this 
question troubled thoughtful minds. "Is it, 
then, the real soul itself, " asks the orthodox 
Count de Mirville, "or a good or bad angel, 
which deceives our eyes when we believe we 
have seen and spoken with a departed soul?" 
While the prevailing opinion of the masters 
of the science of theology, and of St. Thomas, 
surnamed the "Angel of the Schools," is that 
an angel, good or bad, appears in the place of 
the soul, we have nowhere read that the appari- 
tion of the soul itself is impossible. Lord 
Byron, — poet, sceptic, and philosopher, — posi- 
tively asserted that he saw the ghost of his 
friend Shelley soon after he was drowned. 
And he is just as positive when he states that 
"with his own eyes" he saw the phantom monk 
who haunted Newstead Abbey, a spoliation 
which Byron's ancestors received as a gift from 



WHAT OF THE DEAD? 



159 



Henry VIII. Now, what object could a spirit 
have in representing Shelley or the monk who 
disturbed the repose of Byron's household? 

Then take this instance recorded by Mrs. Hall 
in her first volume of "The Night Side of Na- 
ture": "Mr. Kidd said to me: 'One beauti- 
ful night I awoke in my hammock feeling a 
heavy weight upon my chest. I opened my 
eyes and saw the form of my brother stretched 
across the hammock. I tried to persuade my- 
self that I was dreaming and closed my eyes to 
sleep again. But the same weight pressed 
upon me and, looking, I saw my brother as be- 
fore. I stretched out my hand and touched 
his uniform t It was wet! Some one entered 
the room when I cried out, then the body van- 
ished. I afterwards learned that on that very 
night my brother was drowned in the Indian 
Ocean. ' " 

Now, why should a spirit, in this case, simu- 
late the brother of Mr. Kidd, unless we assume 
that in the other world the spirit was asked by 
the drowned man to do so? 

And in this awful example taken from Robert 



160 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



Dale Owen's " Footfalls on the Boundary of 
Another World,' ' why should a spirit haunt a 
man who had in no way injured it? I give the 
history, writes Mr. Owen, as extracted from 
Mrs. Hall's letter to me, dated London, March 
31, 1859. The circumstances occurred in Lon- 
don. 

"All young girls have friendships one with 
another ; and when I was seventeen my friend, 

above all others, was Kate L . She was a 

young Irish lady, my senior by three years, — 
a gentle, affectionate, pretty creature, much de- 
voted to her old mother, and exercising constant 
forbearance toward a disagreeable brother who 
would persist in playing the flute, though he 
played both out of time and tune. This brother 
was my bete noire; and whenever I complained 
of his bad playing, Kate would say, 'Ah, wait 
till Robert comes home ; he plays and sings like 
an angel, and is so handsome!' This Eobert 
had been with his regiment for some years in 
Canada; and his coming home was to be the 
happiness of mother and daughter. For three 
months before his return nothing else was 



WHAT OF THE DEAD? 



161 



talked of. If I had had any talent for falling 
in love, I should have done so, in anticipation, 
with Robert L ; but that was not my weak- 
ness; and I was much amused with my friend's 
speculations as to whether Robert would fall 
in love with me, or I with him, first. 

"When we met, there was, happily, no danger 
to either. He told Kate that her friend was 
always laughing; and I thought I had never 
looked on a face so beautiful in outline and yet 
so haggard and painful. His large blue eyes 
were deeply set, but always seemed looking 
for something they could not find. To look at 
him made me uncomfortable. But this was not 
so strange as the change which, after a time, 
was evident in Kate. She had become, in less 
than a week, cold and constrained. I was to 
have spent the day with her ; but she made some 
apology, and, in doing so, burst into tears. 
Something was evidently wrong, which I felt 
satisfied time must disclose. In about a week 
more she came to see me by myself, looking ten 
years older. She closed the door of my room, 
and then said she desired to tell me something 



162 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

which she felt I could hardly believe, but that, 
if I was not afraid, I might come and judge for 
myself. After Robert's return, she said, for a 
week or so they had been delightfully happy. 
But very soon — she thought about the tenth 
day, or rather night — they were alarmed by 
loud raps and knocks in Robert's room. It was 
the back room on the same floor on which Mrs. 

L and her daughter slept together in a 

large front bed-chamber. They heard him 
swearing at the noise, as if it had been his 
servant ; but the man did not sleep in the house. 
At last he threw his boots at it; and the more 
violent he became, the more violent seemed to 
grow the disturbance. At last his mother ven- 
tured to knock at his door and ask what was the 
matter. He told her to come in. She brought 
a lighted candle and set it on the table. As she 
entered, her son's favorite pointer rushed out 
of the room. ' So,' he said, ' the dog's gone! I 
have not been able to keep a dog in my room 
at night for years ; but under your roof, mother, 
I fancied, I hoped, I might escape a persecu- 
tion that I see now pursues me even here. I 



WHAT OF THE DEAD? 



163 



am sorry for Kate's canary-bird that hung be- 
hind the curtain. I heard it fluttering after the 
first round. Of course it is dead! 7 The old 
lady got up, all trembling, to look at poor Kate 's 
bird. It was dead, at the bottom of the cage, — 
all its feathers ruffled. 

" 'Is there no Bible in the room? 7 she in- 
quired. 'Yes,' — he drew one from under his 
pillow: 'that, I think, protects me from blows/ 
He looked so dreadfully exhausted that his 
mother wished to leave the room, to get him 
some wine. 'No: stay here: do not leave me!' 
he entreated. Hardly had he ceased speaking, 
when some huge, heavy substance seemed roll- 
ing down the chimney and flopped on the hearth ; 
but Mrs. L saw nothing. The next mo- 
ment, as from a strong wind, the light was ex- 
tinguished, while knocks and raps and a rush- 
ing sound passed round the apartment. Kob- 
ert L — — alternately prayed and swore; and 
the old lady, usually remarkable for her self- 
possession, had great difficulty in preventing 
herself from fainting. The noise continued, 
sometimes seeming like violent thumps, some- 



164 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



times the sounds appearing to trickle around 
the room. At last her other son, roused by the 
disturbance, came in, and found his mother on 
her knees, praying. That night she slept in 
her son's room, or rather attempted to do so; 
for sleep was impossible, though her bed was 
not touched or shaken. Kate remained outside 
the open door. It was impossible to see, be- 
cause, immediately after the first plunge down 
the chimney, the lights were extinguished. 
The next morning, Eobert told his family that 
for more than ten years he had been the victim 
of this spirit-persecution. If he lay in his tent, 
it was there, disturbing his brother officers, 
who gradually shunned the society of 'the 
haunted man,' as they called him, — one who 
' must have done something to draw down such 
punishment. ' When on leave of absence, he was 
generally free from the visitation for three or 
four nights; then it found him out again. He 
never was suffered to remain in a lodging; be- 
ing regularly 'warned out' by the house- 
holders, who would not endure the noise. 
"After breakfast, the next-door neighbors 



WHAT OF THE DEAD? 165 

sent in to complain of the noises of the pre- 
ceding night. On the succeeding nights, sev- 
eral friends (two or three of whom I knew) 
sat up with Mrs. L , and sought to investi- 
gate, according to human means, the cause. In 
vain! They verified the fact; the cause re- 
mained hidden in mystery. 

"Kate wished me to hear for myself; but I 
had not courage to do so, nor would my dear 
mother have permitted it. 

"No inducement could prevail on the pointer 
to return to his master's room, by day or night. 
He was a recent purchase, and, until the first 
noise in London came, had appreciated Robert's 
kindness. After that, he evidently disliked his 
master. 'It is the old story over again, ' said 
Eobert. 'I could never keep a dog. I thought 
I would try again; but I shall never have any 
thing to love, and nothing will ever be permit- 
ted to love me.' The animal soon after got 
out; and they supposed it ran away, or was 
stolen. 

' i The young man, seeing his mother and sister 
fading away under anxiety and want of rest, 



166 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

told them lie could bear his affliction better by 
himself, and would therefore go to Ireland, his 
native country, and reside in some detached 
country cottage, where he could fish and shoot. 

"He went. Before his departure I once 
heard the poor fellow say, 'It is hard to be so 
punished ; but perhaps I have deserved it. ' 

"I learned, afterward, that there was more 
than a suspicion that he had abandoned an un- 
fortunate girl who 'loved not wisely, but too 
well.' " 

If lost souls can by anticipation revenge 
themselves on their betrayers and victims, may 
we not, without an excess of temerity, apply 
to them the words of the patriarch to the Lord : 
"For thou scourgest and thou savest: thou 
leadest down to hell and bringest up again : and 
there is none that can escape thy hand.' , 

Now it may be asked: "Notwithstanding 
the denials seriously expressed by many the- 
ologians of the possibility of a departed soul 
returning to earth, is not the belief in the real 
and actual appearances of dead persons re- 
turning, an incontestable fact going back to a 






WHAT OF THE DEAD? 167 

remote antiquity V 9 It is; and we hesitate to 
deny the possibility of a soul reappearing when 
we re-read the history of the apparition of 
Samuel, and are confronted with the positive 
language of the Evangelist, who, without any 
equivocation, or the use of any precaution in 
his language, relates a triple and an exception- 
ally remarkable miracle enclosed in one and the 
same phenomenon. 

When a supernatural change took place in 
the personal appearance of our Divine Lord on 
the Mount, by his side stood Elias, whom death 
had not robbed of his mortal body, and the great 
prophet Moses, whose soul and body had been 
parted for many centuries. Nothing seems to 
more clearly establish and justify a belief in 
a direct and real apparition than the words of 
the sacred text. Peter, James, and John be- 
held Elias and Moses talking with Jesus. 



" Those who deny the reality of these facts, those 
who treat the whole problem as a joke, regard planch- 
ette as a toy, and deny the reality of powers and in- 
fluences which work unseen, should observe the effects 
of some of the Spiritualistic manifestations. They 
would no longer, I imagine, scoff at that investigation 
and be tempted to call all mediums frauds, but would 
be inclined to admit that there is a true terror of the 
dark, and that there are 'principalities and powers' 
with which we, in our ignorance, toy, without knowing 
and realizing the frightful consequences which may 
result from this tampering with the unseen world." — 
Hereward Carrington, "Psychology." 



XII 

SPIRITS OF ANOTHER WORLD 

Prevalence of Materialism before the War — Denial of the 
Supernatural — Swing of the Pendulum to Spiritism — Sir 
Oliver Lodge — Conan Doyle — St. Francis of Sales — St. 
Hilary— The "Eagle of Meaux"— St. Paul— H. Carrington 
— Stainton Moses — Godfrey J. Raupert — The Nine Articles 
of Spiritism. 

Before the war Materialism was, among men 
who professed to be wise, the accepted scientific 
philosophy of Europe and America. It de- 
manded high courage on the part of any man 
who dared to oppose himself to this Material- 
istic philosophy. 

The immortality of the soul, rewards and pun- 
ishments in another world, man's responsibility 
to, and dependence on, God, and even the ex- 
istence of God, were denounced as the remains 
and wreckage of the flood of superstition 
which deluged the dark and unscientific ages of 
the past. The believers in the Materialistic 

169 



170 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

philosophy of Maudsley, Spencer, Huxley, Dar- 
win, and Clifford relegated to the ash-heap all 
trust in the supernatural and all belief in a here- 
after. 

To the student of the history of human 
thought and of natural philosophy there is 
nothing new in the pendulum of the Material- 
istic mind swinging now to the other extreme 
and resting in the very antithesis of Material- 
ism, — in gross Spiritism. That the sons of the 
men who denied and scoffed at the possibility of 
a life beyond the grave, should now reject the 
crude denials of their fathers and embrace a 
Spiritistic philosophy of life, is one of those 
strange anomalies with which all history is 
filled. The fathers " changed the truth of God 
into a lie ; they have eaten sour grapes and their 
children's teeth are on edge." Now, as in 
Apostolic times, these men "are ever learning 
and never attaining to the knowledge of the 
truth." 

The lectures, reviews, and especially the book, 
"Raymond," of Sir Oliver Lodge, now passing 
through its 20th edition, have set the heather of 



SPIRITS OF ANOTHER WORLD 171 

England and America afire. From a "hard- 
shell" scientist of the Materialist school, Sir 
Oliver, by a marvelous feat of mental gymnas- 
tics, has turned a double somersault and landed 
upright at the feet of a medium. He states, 
without any equivocation, that he has repeat- 
edly spoken with the soul of his son Eaymond, 
who was killed in the war. He is supported 
in his contention by Sir Conan Doyle, who in- 
form's us that "much — notice he doesn't say all 
— which the spirits tell us is true. ' ' 

Sir Conan prophesies that, when the war is 
over, religion, which is now undergoing a pro- 
cess of change, will be recast in the mould of 
Spiritism. By the way, did not Sir Oliver and 
Sir Conan, some twelve years ago, reject the 
existence of a world of spirits'? Did they not 
scorn to argue the reality of Spiritism by con- 
tending that it was an absurdity? Then, 
"deeming themselves wise they became fools," 
and now they profess to know it all. 

Well, let us see how much wiser they are now 
than they were twelve years ago. We have 
seen that the dead do not and cannot respond 



172 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



to the call of a medium or of any man. Who, 
then, are they who come from the spirit world 
at our bidding and say and do such extraordi- 
nary things! "They are," writes St. Francis 
of Sales, "evil spirits who, since the sin of 
Adam, are in communication with man (en rap- 
port avec I'homme), at one time seducing him 
to evil acts to the injury of his soul, and at an- 
other time, when God permits it — and that God 
does often permit the Sacred Scriptures and 
all history attest — tormenting his body, speak- 
ing and acting with his organs, as if for the 
time these evil spirits were absolutely his mas- 
ters." 1 

"Spirits are so numerous and so powerful," 
writes St. Hilary, one of the greatest and most 
learned men of his century, "that without the 
help of God and that of his holy angels safe- 
guarding and protecting our weakness, we 
could not resist their conspiracy of trickery and 
hatred." 2 

Nor must we assume that the opinions of 

i Vie de Saint Frangois de Sales, by M. 1'AbbS Hamon, 
Paris, Vol. I, p. 241. 

2 Com. in Psalm., cxxxiv. 



SPIRITS OF ANOTHER WORLD 173 

men of great learning and genius have changed 
with the advance of civilization and the progress 
of time. 

Those familiar with the writings and sermons 
of Bossuet, "the Eagle of Meaux," will con- 
cede that no greater mind or personality ever 
entered upon the world of lofty thought than 
the mind and personality of the great French 
prelate. In the eighth volume of his works, 
published at Paris in 1845, is found his Premier 
Sermon sur les Demons. In that great sermon 
he tells us that: "If God did not limit the 
power to act of these evil angels, they would 
destroy us all. And that these malicious 
(malfaisants) spirits, known of old as demons, 
exist, is a truth so luminously clear in the 
Divine Writings, so certified to by the universal 
consent of all nations and peoples, that it is 
not open to controversy. God forbid that I 
should so far forget the dignity belonging to 
this sacred tribune as to advance reasons or 
extraneous proofs in support of that which is 
so openly taught by the Sacred Word of God 
and by ecclesiastical tradition,' ' 



174 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



There is nothing in Sir Oliver Lodge's book 
or Conan Doyle's articles that has not been 
known from immemorial time or that is not 
familiar to all dispassionate students of demon- 
ology. Their experiences are but repetitions 
of those recorded by Home, Dupotet, Regaz- 
zoni, and others, on whom the same spirits, 
claiming to be departed souls, imposed their 
pernicious negations and false philosophy. 

And here we may, not inaptly, reproduce the 
statement of Sir William Barrett, President of 
the English Society for Psychical Research. 
In his book on " Necromancy and Modern 
Magic ' ' he says : 

"It seems to me that the Apostle Paul, in 
his Epistle to the Ephesians, points to a race 
of spiritual creatures, similar to those I have 
described, but of a malignant type, when he 
speaks of beings not made of flesh and blood, 
inhabiting the air around us and able injuri- 
ously to affect mankind." Alluding to the 
dangers attending seances and consulting spir- 
its he writes: "Of course, it is true now, as 
then, that these practices are dangerous in 



SPIRITS OF ANOTHER WORLD 175 

proportion as they lead us to surrender rea- 
son, or our will, to the dictates of an invisible 
and oftentimes masquerading spirit which 
tempts us to forsake the sure but arduous path- 
way of knowledge and of progress for an en- 
ticing maze which lures us round and round.' ' 

Now read what that great researcher into 
psychic phenomena, Hereward Carrington, 
says in his ' ' Psychology ' ' : 

"When I wrote my book 'The Coming Sci- 
ence, ' some years ago, I contended (pp. 59-78) 
that there was really no good first-hand evidence 
that Spiritistic practices induced abnormal and 
morbid states and conditions to the extent usu- 
ally supposed. Further experience has caused 
me to change that opinion. I now believe that 
the danger of Spiritistic practices is very great, 
and that this aspect of the problem is one that 
should be more widely discussed and more at- 
tention should be given to it by members of the 
Society for Psychical Research. The recent 
writings of Viollet and Mr. J. Godfrey Raupert 
should be more widely known. But it is prob- 
able that all these books would not have influ- 



176 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

enced me had I not seen several examples of 
such detrimental influence myself — cases of de- 
lusion, insanity and all the horrors of obsession. 
Those who deny the reality of these facts, those 
who treat the whole problem as a joke, regard 
planchette as a toy, and deny the reality of 
powers and influences which work unseen, should 
observe the effects of some of the Spiritistic 
manifestations. They would no longer, I 
imagine, scoff at that investigation and be 
tempted to call all mediums frauds, but would 
be inclined to admit that there is a true terror 
of the dark, and there are 'principalities and 
powers ' with which we, in our ignorance, toy, 
without knowing and realizing the frightful con- 
sequences which may result from this tamper- 
ing with the unseen world. ' ' 

We have already mentioned that these spirits 
who respond to the summons of the medium, 
are not the souls of the dead. Camille Flam- 
marion, the widely known French astronomer, 
who devoted many hours of his long life to the 
study of Spiritism and spirit phenomena, 
writes : 



SPIRITS OF ANOTHER WORLD 177 

i l Souls of the dead? This is far from being 
demonstrated. My observations of forty years 
prove the contrary. No satisfactory identi- 
fication has been made by me." 

This is also the opinion of Mr. Stainton 
Moses, of University College, London, and a 
member of the London Dialectical Society. "I 
could not get rid," he wrote, "of the idea that 
the faith of Christendom was practically upset 
by their [the spirit-teachings '] issue. I be- 
lieved that, however it might be disguised, such 
would be their outcome in the end. The cen- 
tral dogmas seemed especially attacked, and it 
was this that startled me. . . . Then came the 
doubt as to how far all might be the work of 
Satan, ' transformed into an angel of light,' 
laboring for the subversion of the faith." 

So far back as 1871, a member of a Committee 
of the London Dialectical Society, which had 
been formed for the purpose of investigating 
and reporting upon the much disputed phe- 
nomena, made the following emphatic state- 
ment: "My opinion of these phenomena is 
that the intelligence which is put in communica- 



178 



ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 



tion with us, is a fallen one. It is of the devil, 
the prince of the power of the air. I believe 
that we commit the crime of necromancy when 
we take part in these spiritistic seances/' 

No man in modern times has given more 
thought and intelligent study to psychic and 
spirit phenomena, or has written so luminously, 
dispassionately, and calmly on Spiritism than 
Mr. J. Godfrey Kaupert. In his work, "Mod- 
ern Spiritism,' ' he summarises the profession 
of faith of modern Spiritism in these nine ar- 
ticles of denial : 

"1. That Christianity cannot be regarded 
as a revelation of an unique and specific char- 
acter, foreshadowed in the Jewish ordinances, 
foretold by prophet and seer, and completed 
and consummated on Calvary and on the day of 
Pentecost; but that it is one of many forms of 
high spirit-manifestation designed to enforce 
upon man the binding obligations of the moral 
law inherent in his nature, and to remind him 
of the true character of his high origin and 
destiny. 

"2. That Christ is not divine in the sense in 




SPIRITS OF ANOTHER WORLD 179 

which the Church throughout all ages has un- 
derstood that term and has believed and taught 
Him to be divine. That He is, on the contrary, 
a human being like ourselves — at best perhaps 
a spirit of a high order and possessed of re- 
markable gifts and powers, who, descending 
from the higher spheres and assuming a hu- 
man body, was content to lay down His life as 
a testimony to the truth of the doctrines which 
He taught. 

' ' 3. That the teaching of the Catholic Church 
respecting His character and person and the 
aim and purpose of His death, is based upon 
a misconception, due to human error and weak- 
ness, and to subsequent philosophical thought 
and speculation. 

"4. That there is no priesthood specially set 
apart and ordained by Christ with a view to 
perpetuating His work and to forming the link 
between the sphere of the human and the 
divine. 

' * 5. That the Church, with its sacramental in- 
stitutions for the effectual carrying out of this 
work, and for the raising of the human soul to 



180 ESSAYS IN OCCULTISM 

a supernatural life, for the imparting to it of 
supernatural gifts and graces, is a vain thing 
fondly invented, and at best an institution of 
mere human origin and doing a purely human 
work. 

' i 6. That the scriptural notion of retribution 
after death and of punishment for sin committed 
in the flesh is a misreading and misrepresenta- 
tion of the words of Christ and of those feelings 
of failure and of loss which necessarily attend 
the slow process of human evolution, retribu- 
tion only taking place in the sense that suffer- 
ing must follow upon wrong, wilfully or igno- 
rantly done, in order that thus the way to right 
doing and to right conduct may be found. 

1 ' 7. That man is daily and hourly, by his own 
deeds and misdeeds, and by the general mould- 
ing and shaping of his character, preparing for 
himself his own heaven or his own hell; that 
these are, however, far other than those which 
theology holds and inculcates. 

"8. That physical death does not in any sense 
determine the destiny of the human spirit ; but 
that, irrespective of personal beliefs or dis- or 






SPIRITS OF ANOTHER WORLD 181 

misbeliefs, its training and education are con- 
tinued and indefinitely prolonged in the spirit- 
spheres. 

"9. That man is in fact, in the truest sense 
of the word, his own Saviour." 

It will be noticed by the thoughtful reader 
that the end aimed at by both Spiritists and 
Materialists is the same — destruction of Chris- 
tianity. The reader will also notice that at 
no time in the history of the human race have 
the spirits, or has Spiritism, contributed any- 
thing to the advancement of knowledge or the 
progress of civilization. 



THE END 



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